RCC Experiments

HOW DO THEY DO IT?

2009-01-28T00:34:00.000-08:00

PAINTING - MASTERPIECE

2008-05-17T04:31:00.000-07:00

'Masterpiece': Lucien Freud's painting of Sue Tilley has become the world's most expensive painting by a living artist

DANCING LETTERS

2008-05-16T05:31:00.001-07:00

Myspace text generator

for interesting dancing letters...

PICS TO USE

2008-03-19T01:14:00.001-07:00

BABY PLUS PRAYING HANDS

2007-09-17T23:12:00.001-07:00

IMAGES - PASTOR'S FAMILY, POVERTY

2007-09-17T23:09:00.000-07:00

COMPUTERS FOR COUNTRY FOLKS

2007-09-09T16:16:00.000-07:00

HOW DO I ENLARGE / SEPARATE THESE?

ELEPHANT STORY

2007-08-31T00:29:00.001-07:00

RAIN

2007-08-29T22:26:00.000-07:00

(SUPPOSED TO SEE THE RAIN FALLING - A MIRACLE... BUT THE PICTURE IS TOO FOGGY).

AMAZING JUGGLING FINALE

2007-08-20T00:30:00.000-07:00

PEACE CANDLE

2007-08-15T03:55:00.000-07:00

FLYING DOVE

2007-08-02T04:26:00.000-07:00

WHO'D BE A MAN?

2007-07-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

MORE PICS

2007-07-07T01:00:00.000-07:00

IMAGES

2007-06-19T02:00:00.001-07:00

ANGELS WINGS

2007-05-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

MIXED MARRIAGE

2007-05-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

GET SCOREBOARD FREE

2007-05-15T19:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.vcricket.com/archive/t1_Australia_t2_SriLanka_d_04_28_2007_index.aspx

ADD MAKE POVERTY HISTORY BANNER

2007-05-15T19:47:00.000-07:00

TEMPLATE
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MAKE A SPACE
COPY THIS SCRIPT

2007-05-15T19:36:00.000-07:00

STEVE'S BEST IDEAS

2007-05-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

GodTube

Link - http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=240ad5b9b413aa7346a1

~~~

My Photo

http://bp2.blogger.com/_WIJdR75WmGY/Rj6FQwo7XgI/AAAAAAAAARo/9e2Fibn7Ot4/s1600-h/rc.jpg

SHANE CLAIBORNE

2007-05-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

IDEA: UPDATE 'MY STORY'

2007-05-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

... FROM http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8062.htm

WATCH FOR A NEW BLOG

latest images 300407

2007-04-30T04:51:00.000-07:00

The Scream

Return of the Prodigal (Rembrandt?)

Key Pictures

2007-04-30T04:34:00.001-07:00

MORE IMAGES

2007-04-27T04:39:00.000-07:00

AND A FEW MORE IDEAS/IMAGES

2007-04-26T01:55:00.000-07:00

AND STILL MORE IMAGES

2007-04-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

MORE IMAGES

2007-04-25T17:11:00.001-07:00

BOY WITH MUDPHONE

SMALL GIRL
SOLDIER AND KID
FLOWER HEADER
WEIRD
ADVENTURE

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2007-04-25T17:11:00.000-07:00

BOY WITH MUDPHONE
SMALL GIRL
SOLDIER AND KID
FLOWER HEADER
WEIRD
ADVENTURE

MORE IMAGES

2007-04-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

STOTT
ROTATING THINGO
CLOUDS

MONA LISA

~~~

BAPTIST CHURCH MEMBERSHIP - ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-23T23:04:00.000-07:00

(The following is an edited abridgment of a 32-page booklet by Rowland Croucher, 'Baptist Church Membership', available from the Australian Baptist Publishing House, Sydney).

Felix Mantz. He was a native of Zurich, and had received a liberal education. Having early adopted the principles of the Reformation, he became an intimate friend of Zuingli and other Swiss Reformers. But in the year 1522, he began to doubt the scriptural authority of infant-baptism, and of the Church constitution which then existed at Zurich, and he suffered imprisonment in consequence. After this he preached in the fields and woods, whither the people flocked in crowds to hear him, and there he baptized those who professed faith. For this the Zurich magistrates denounced him as a rebel, and about the close of 1526 he was apprehended and lodged in the tower of Wellenberg. On the 5th of January, 1527, he was drowned. “As he came down from the Wellenberg to the fish market,” says Bullinger, “and was led through the shambles to the boat, he praised God that he was about to die for His truth. For Anabaptism was right, and founded on the Word of God, and Christ had foretold that His followers would suffer for the truth’s sake. And the like discourse he urged much, contradicting the preacher who attended him. On the way his mother and brother came to him, and exhorted him to be steadfast; and he persevered in his folly, even to the end. When he was bound upon the hurdle, and was about to be thrown into the stream by the executioner, he sang with a loud voice: ‘In manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum.’ (‘Into Thine hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.’) And herewith was he drawn into the water by the executioner, and drowned.”

“It is reported here,” says Capito, writing to Zuingli from Strasburg, on the 27th of January, 1527, “that your Felix Mantz hath suffered punishment, and died gloriously; by which the cause of truth and piety which you sustain, is weighed down exceedingly.”4 No wonder! Persecution will “weigh down” any cause. And Protestant persecution is the most hateful of all.

Baptists begin a discussion about themselves by trying to understand the 'Good News', the 'gospel'. In essence, Paul says (Philippians 2:10-11), the 'Good News' is that 'JESUS CHRIST IS LORD!' That's where Baptists start their thinking. This isn't just an abstract doctrine - it means that he's our Master, our King. We are his obedient servants, his subjects, who do what he commands. He is the ultimate authority for all thinking and acting. He is God the Son, through whom everything came into being and before whom everyone will ultimately 'fall on their knees'.

Jesus Christ is Lord - or 'Head' - of the Church, his Body. So Christians are people who both individually and collectively, are constantly asking: 'What does our Lord want us to believe, and what does he want us to do?'

This leads us to the Bible, in which the mind of Christ is revealed. The Bible is God's Word, his authoritative guide for our faith and practice. It is the inspired and trustworthy record of the mighty acts of God in the history of his people Israel and fulfilled in the life, teachings, and saving work of Christ.

So Baptists are encounaraged to be keen 'Bible people', seeking with and open and reverent mind to understand what God is saying to us today. Sometimes we won't find specific answers to all our modern problems there, but we'll always find God's guiding principles. The greatest principle, or commandment, said Jesus, is to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength'. And the second greatest: 'Love your neighbour as you love yourself'.

For Baptists, then, God alone is the sovereign Lord. They have always tried to follow the apostolic principle: 'We must obey God rather than humans'. Baptists reject doctrines or practices which either contradict or are not in harmony with Christ's will revealed in the Bible. They have simply believed that most of the differences between churches would be resolved if apostolic principles and practices were held in their true scriptural relationship with one another. And so, for just about every question we reply with another: 'What does the Bible say?'

But this doesn't mean Baptists arrogantly believe they are the only ones who are right. No one (except God alone) has 'a monopoly on the truth'. We are humble fellow-learners with others who also submit to the truth of Scripture. And 'God has yet more light and truth to break forth from his holy Word'. A Baptist says with love, to another Christian: 'You are my brother/sister, not because we happen to agree on everything, but because we are both God's children'. This is why Baptists have produced written 'confessions' but never written 'creeds'. Creeds become 'locked into' the particular questions of one historical era, and later Christians may be asking some different questions. Further, creeds tend to make people 'exclusive' - if you don't dot all the i's and cross all the t's you're not acceptable. Baptists aim rather to be inclusive: our bond is simply our common relationship to Jesus Christ.

This leads us to another Baptist emphasis -

The Church = 'The Company of The Committed'

It is not uncommon for Baptist church constitutions to begin: 'The church shall be composed of those... who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Lord'. When Baptists throughout their history have been asked 'Who belongs to the church?' their response is always: 'Only those who've deliberately chosen to follow the way of Jesus - the "regenerate", those born again!'

Perhaps this can best be explained by taking a short journey into the past.

Baptists trace their spiritual history back to people like the 'Anabaptists' ('re-baptisers') in 16th century Europe. It was the time when Luther, Calvin, and other 'Protestants' urged people to go back to the Bible for their instructions about faith and living, and reject doctrines and practices in the Church of Rome which they believed were unbiblical. For example, they talked about 'the priesthood of all believers'. The Church of Rome made ordinary believers dependent upon the mediation of the priests, but these 'Reformers' proclaimed the right of every Christian to have access to God through the mediation of Christ alone. They encouraged ordinary people to read the Word of God (something rare - and even forbidden by the church authorities in those days). They said that every Christian has the Holy Spirit who inspired the writing of Scripture, so God can speak to them by this same Spirit as they read the Bible. You and I don't need the authorities in the church to tell us what to believe - it's all there in God's holy Word.

The Anabaptists, however, said Luther and Calvin and the others didn't take their 'Reformation' far enough. They agreed that 'If it's in the Bible we believe it; if it isn't, we reject it, even though centuries of Christian history are behind a particular belief'. But they objected to the close alliance between church and state which had gone on for more than a thousand years. They also rejected infant baptism, which they believed, served to perpetuate state churches filled with nominal Christians.

Meanwhile, over in England, a 'Puritan' movement emerged within the Church of England, calling that church back to the Scriptures. One learned man, Rev. John Smyth M.A. (a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge University), became a city lecturer at Lincoln at the turn of the 17th century - a post which allowed him to expound the Scriptures to his townspeople who weren't satisfied with the teaching they were receiving in their churches. When things got 'too hot' for these Puritans, some went as refugees to Holland. There John Smyth continued to study the Scriptures, and with the help of some Dutch Mennonites (an Anabaptist group), came to hold certain convictions which Baptists have maintained ever since. In 1609 he became the leader of the first English-speaking 'Baptist' church.

He saw - with the Anabaptists - that 'established churches' weren't an apostolic idea at all. You become a member of these churches through infant baptism, and everyone in a particular community - or 'parish' - therefore almost automatically belonged to the 'parish church'. Now that's all wrong, these Baptists said. Only people who've had a personal encounter with Christ can belong to the church. You can't be born a Christian: at some point in your life you choose to belong to Christ's church, when you repent of your sins and commit your life willingly to him.

So Baptists have always been wary of alliances between churches and the state authorities. They've said governments shouldn't influence - or interfere with - the free choice people make about their allegience to Christ and the church. They have taken the idea a step further, too, and until recently, have generally refused government funding for their Christian ministries. (Today government grants may be accepted for educational and social welfare purposes, but not usually for worship and pastoral ministries.)

Because people willingly choose to belong to the church, a high standard of Christian behaviour and discipleship is expected of members of Baptist churches. Because they possess God's Holy Spirit, they should live on a higher plane than non-Christians. Sometimes 'church discipline' has to be lovingly but firmly extended towards those who bring the faith of Christ into disrepute by their disobedient behaviour.

Many Anabaptists and early Baptists were martyred (often by drowning, 'seeing they like so much water,' their enemies said) for these beliefs.

Who Runs the Church?

The short answer, of course: Christ does! It's his church. When members of his body meet, he's there with them. Christ is both the Lord of the redeemed person and the redeemed community. Both have his Holy Spirit to guide them, and are therefore sufficiently 'competent' to know his will. So local Baptist churches are 'autonomous' - they govern themselves. (Look up Acts 13:1,2 for a New Testament example of a local church acting on its own initiative.) Baptists therefore do not recognise the power of a bishop, synod, conference, or assembly to determine or overrule the decisions of a local church.

Sometimes, however, these churches may cooperate, and form 'Unions' (there is a 'Baptist Union' of churches in each Australian state, in Australia as a whole, and in New Zealand). These associations of churches co-ordinate Baptists' joint efforts to obey the great commission. Such Unions may appoint officers to guide in specific areas of ministry such as home missions (helping younger churches to get going), overseas missions and training future pastors. There is no fixed plan or pattern here: these structures are very flexible, change from time to time, and differ in various countries.

Local churches - like individual Christians - need each other. The challenge facing us is to encourage self-governing churches to become more 'inter-dependent' rather than 'independent'.

The Baptist Unions (or Conventions or Associations, as they are called in some places) are mostly affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance, which has about 30 millian members in 117,000 churches. (The U.S. has the largest number - 25 million, followed by India - 815,000, U.S.S.R. - 545,000, Brazil - 464,000 and Burma - 358,000. Australian Baptist church members number about 53,000, New Zealand 18,000).

# Generally Baptists haven't been keen on 'organic' unity with other Christian denominations. Some Baptist groups have joined the World Council of Churches, while others feel they ought to preserve their distinctiveness by remaining outside such bodies. Baptists don't claim to be 'the only true church': they want to learn humbly from others. They believe that what unites Christians is far more decisive and basic than what divides them. However they have mostly felt that their special Scriptural insights are best preserved by staying 'Baptists'. What do you think? Is this likely to change?

How is a local church governed? Baptists are 'congregational'. They meet, free from any 'outside' control, to arrive at a consensus about God's will, through Bible study, prayer, and discussion. A British Baptist statement (1948) says such a church meeting is 'the occasion when, as individuals and as a community, we submit ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and stand under the judgment of God that we may know the mind of Christ'.

The aim of each congregation will be to reflect the character of Jesus in all that it does. So persons will matter more than agendas or programs or constitutions! We will love and respect those with whom we may disagree. Although Baptist church members' meetings are democratic (any member is free to speak on any matter on the agenda), they are really, in essence, theocratic (ruled by God), so members don't have the right to say anything they please - but only what is loving, constructive, true, and that which humbly seeks the mind of Christ. Because they affirm diversity within their Fellowships they will sometimes 'agree to differ - agreeably' on some issues. So Baptists have generally been happy with 'majority voting' on all but really major issues (which may require a large majority, or, occasionally, total unanimity). Some churches seldom take a vote - they will discuss issues until a general consensus is achieved, or failing that, will defer the matter for further prayerful thought and consideration.

Leadership

Christ appointed leaders to serve the church. There's a list of these in Ephesians 4. Apostles, prophets and evangelists were generally 'itinerant' - they moved around among several churches. 'Pastor- teachers' were (and are) shepherds - feeding Christ's flock and caring for it. Their task: to equip all the members so that they will become spiritually mature.

Most Baptist churches have one pastor (although some are now appointing two or more). He or she is generally considered the leader, although neither the pastor/s nor any other person has the final word in the church's affairs: that's the prerogative of the members' meeting. Sometimes, therefore, the pastor is said to be 'the first among equals'. Pastors are servants of the church, but the church is not their master - Christ is.

The pastors' priorities: Bible study, prayer, and training others for ministry. They're a sort of 'player-coach' encouraging others to serve, witness and visit. Church members are not helpers of the pastor, so that the pastor can do their job; pastors are helpers of the whole people of God, so that they all can be the church (to paraphrase Hans Ruedi Weber). Pastors must be encouraged to keep themselves 'in training for a godly life', so the congregation will allow them time for study and reflection. Remember that your pastors are human: they, too, have doubts, fears, and frustrations. Please don't add to them! Francis Schaeffer says pastors often unwittingly break the tenth commandment - they are covetous of the successes or gifts of other pastors. Remedy? Affirm your pastor, so they know they're loved! If you appreciate them, tell them so!

In the New Testament, bishops or elders (both words describe the same people) were the 'overseers' of the churches. These leaders 'work hard', perform pastoral duties and help make important decisions. Only those with the appropriate 'gifts' should be appointed elders - not just to 'fill the number'. It's better to have no elders than the wrong ones. Each elder ought to have a list of those they are shepherding, and these people know they can turn to their elder at any time. (A ratio of one elder to 12 persons or family groups is recommended.)

Deacons are 'servants'. Both Jesus and Paul used this word of themselves. Their tasks: administrative leadership, policy-making, and planning.

Both elders and deacons have 'spiritual' ministries. They are accountable to the church members. The personal and spiritual qualities of these leaders are spelt out in 1 Timothy 3: 1-13. Note that such appointments have nothing to do with age, sex, or status. Spiritual leadership is not for people who like to be 'bossy'; the badge of office for all followers of Christ is a towel! Both groups (if your church has both) ought to be commissioned by the congregation, who will pray for them earnestly. These 'servants' will lead by encouragement and example, rather than by coercion. They will generally plan openly rather than covertly. They will continually inform their people of their doings, and will invite feed-back from the members. Occasionally they will 'retreat' ('advance'?) for times of prayer, study and discusison.

# Discuss: Paul says (Galatians 3:28) that Jesus has healed divisions between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free-people, males and females. The early church was ahead of its time in granting 'personhood' to women, and many fulfilled public ministries. American Baptists (from 80 years ago) and Southern Baptists (from 20 years ago) in the U.S. have occasionally ordained women for pastoral ministry, as have Baptists in Britain, Canada, New Zealand and some Australian states. Leon Morris, an Anglican scholar, says women in the early church did more than 'keep silence when it was a question of expounding the Christian faith'. Some Baptists have emphasised the 'submission' and 'keeping quiet' passages. Others say that the principle of Galatians 3:28 is to be applied appropriately within each culture. What do you think?

CHALLENGES FACING BAPTISTS IN THE '90'S

Having pastored Baptist churches for 30 years, spoken to all the Baptist pastors' conferences around Australia and preached in about 200 Baptist churches, here are my suggestions about the issues Baptists are facing. They vary in intensity from state to state and church to church.

1. Baptist pharisaism. The essential issue here is the elevation of dogma or church rules over 'accepting' those whom God accepts (Romans 15:7). The two key issues are social justice (Matthew 23:23 and Luke 11:42) and open membership. Until recently Baptists were quite muted about their concern for the poor, and the causes of such poverty. Fortunately they are reading Jesus and the prophets again! On the issue of open membership, see my paper on the subject. Briefly, if Jesus said accepting people is more important than sticking to ordinances (even an important ordinance like baptism) then let's follow Jesus rather than the pharisees! Nothing can be added to grace, not even baptism. The Baptist principle of 'liberty of conscience' should apply here as everywhere else. A system which allows a sexually active young person or greedy adult to be a member of most of our churches (and they are!) but not a godly Anglican or Salvationist has got to have something wrong with it. Baptists have to be reminded they're Christians first, Baptists second.

2. The Leadership Ministries of Women. In the NT women were quite prominent in the churches, despite strong patriarchal cultures. Today, the church is creating a scandal by appearing to treat women as second-class citizens. Only two Australian Baptist Unions (Victoria and South Australia) recognize the pastoral leadership gifts of women: if God were to raise up a Deborah to lead the whole people of God today most of us wouldn't let him to it! We should be grateful God is not a legalist! (See my paper on Women in Leadership).

3. Charismatic Renewal. People who derive their security from the predictable institutions or dogmas they adhere to will always be threatened by notions of renewal, particularly radical renewal. The impact of charismatic renewal is no exception. The Holy Spirit is moving in dynamic ways through all the churches and in all the world, but traditionalists will find themselves opposing anything which is not part of their cherished history. Although the devil as well as the Holy Spirit is operative in some aspects of charismatic renewal, Baptists and others will need to be careful about the dangers of fighting God: they can't win! (See my paper 'Charismatic Renewal: Myths and Realities').

4. Institutional Renewal. About 95% of Australian Baptists agree with the statement 'There's something wrong with the way our church business meetings are conducted'. The 5% who enjoy power-broking or have an excess of spare time on their hands or enjoy the thrill of swaying the voting intentions of others will derive some enjoyment from church business meetings. Baptists have equated congregationalism with democracy: modern notions of democracy are not biblical. Baptists also have forgotten that the NT has three forms of church government - episcopal, presbyterian as well as congregational. Baptists have also allowed their adherence to a notion of 'the priesthood of all believers' to contaminate their polity: believers should not use church meetings as a forum to be negative. Church meetings exist for information-dissemination (what God is doing amongst us), celebration (worshipping the Lord who is the head of the church) and discernment (prayerfully finding the will of our Lord in specific situations). Whilst the method of decision-making will vary from culture to culture, and issue to issue, neither democracy nor unanimity is appropriate in every situation. (Democracy may mean the leading families rule; unanimity may leave us all at the mercy of the 'nut' who will vote 'no' to everything!).

5. Ecumenism. Baptists may have some justifiable reasons to be leary of some things the World Council of Churches does. But they have no justifiable reason for non-cooperation with others who 'acknowledge Jesus Christ as Saviour Lord and God, according to the Scriptures'. We must not do anything to negate our Lord's prayer 'that they may be one'.

6. Evangelism. The idea of 'seeker services' is not new: it was there in apostolic times, according to Michael Green (Evangelism Through the Local Church). Neighbourhood 'coffee 'n dessert' nights, friendship services, Christianity Explained courses - these and many other tools are available for us to reach out to those the New Testament calls 'the lost'.

7. Clericalism. The Christian Brethren movement have had a valid objection to 'clergy running the church and denying others a ministry'. Baptists are still plagued by clericalism, whereby pastors accrue power rather than disseminating it. The task of church leaders is to train and empower others for ministry, not do it for them! (See ch. 31 'Ministry as Empowerment' in my Your Church Can Come Alive).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Baptist Heritage, H. Leon McBeth (Broadman, 1987): a comprehensive 850-page overview of Baptist history and emphases, mainly from a North American perspective.

Challenge to Change: A Radical Agenda for Baptists, Nigel Wright (Kingsway 1991) 'calls for consensus over constitution, power over programme evangelism, and makes a case for Baptist bishops'.

A Community of Believers by Charles W. Deweese (Judson, 1978), a good general handbook, with a useful discussion on 'church covenants'

Growing on Together (Baptist Union of NSW), a simple, readable paper-back written by Australian Baptists.

Church Members'Kit, produced by the pastoral team of the Blackburn Baptist Church (13 Holland Rd, Blackburn, Australia. 3130).

Studies in Baptism by Basil S. Brown (Clifford Press, Melbourne), a 32-page summary of the meaning of Baptism by a former Australian theological college professor.

The Church, a Baptist View (Gordon W. Martin), Authority, a Baptist View (B.R. White), Freedom, a Baptist View(J.H. Briggs), Baptism, a Baptist View (John W. Matthews), Children in the Church, a Baptist View (D.F. Tennant), Ministry, a Baptist View (John F. Nicholson), booklets produced by the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland. (Australian agents - Clifford Press, Melbourne)

The Baptist Church Member (Baptist Church Life and Ministry, Victoria), 9 studies for prospective members. Available through Baptist Book Stores.

The Water that Divides by Donald Bridge and David Phypers (IVP, 1977), a good discussion of the pros and cons of baptism and the open/closed membership question.

A History of the Baptists by R.G. Torbet (judson, 3rd Edition), a good general history.

Baptist Confessions of Faith by W.L. Lumpkin (Judson 1959), a more comprehensive volume.

A Baptist Manual of Polity and Practice: Revised Edition by Norman H. Maring and Winthrop S. Hudson (Judson Press, 1991).

(Also check out the web site http//www.abc-usa.org for the ABC/USA.)

ÇHURCH AND STATE - ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-23T19:01:00.000-07:00

Review: CHURCH AND STATE, Australia’s Imaginary Wall, by Tom Frame (UNSW Press 2006)
Tom Frame, historian and writer, left a military career in the navy to train for the Anglican priesthood and was, until recently, the (high profile) Bishop of the Australian armed forces. In this little book (96 pages) he probes the complex relationship between church and state, especially in Australia, where the influence of religious organizations, lobby groups and individuals has increased the temperature of the discussion about whether and to what extent government policy should be ínformed’ (to use a neutral word) by religious dogma.
Briefly: Tom Frame reminds us that the Australian constitution does not formally separate church and state. He argues that some contact between the two spheres is both inevitable and, occasionally, desirable. But, yes, there are tensions, and, he believes, Christians are largely responsible for these.
This is really an ancient problem, as theologian Karl Barth famously reminded us: the state which God has ordained to keep order in Romans 13 is the ‘Beast from the abyss’ in Revelation 13.
Tom’s first words: Áustralia is not a Christian nation… it never has been, [although] public life has, of course, been shaped by a long and close encounter with Christianity.’ There’s nothing in Australian law (as there is in British law) which gives any privilege to the Anglican church or precedence to any religion.
Those who demand a strict separation between church and state (the Australian Democrats political part and, I think, the most vocal in Australia) are ‘separationists’, Tom says: they want to erect a legal ‘wall’ that prevents interactions from a fear that an éstablished’church might emerge. Thus separationists want to end any special privileges churches receive – eg. Taxation benefits, because, it is claimed, they amount to de facto recognition of Christianity. The opposite view is that because a clear majority of Australians declare some connection with a Christian denomination, some public reflection of the beliefs and values of Christians is warranted.
There are of course, extremists on both sides: some advocating a theocracy, others a purely secular state. And inevitably the backdrop of global religiously-inspired terrorism, church-state relations has become a cause of widespread anxiety.
Tom’s historical overview is succinct and well-researched. Ancient Israel was a theocracy: there was no administrative or political division between the religious and mundane aspects of life. Jesus was largely indifferent to Roman rule: ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s; and to God what belongs to God’(Matthew 22:21). The Christian apostles told their people to live in peace with each other and with the powers-that-be, although when those powers stepped up their persecution of Christians, they were an evil to be resisted – but peacefully, and if necessary, through martyrdom. The state was simply the means to an end in the divine ordering of the world. But Constantine’s conversion to Christianity (312 AD) changed all that: Christian baptism became a rite administered at birth, and became a symbol of citizenship. For 1,000 years, 400 to 1400, in Western Europe, church and state were thoroughly intertwined – ending, in England, when Henry VIII declared in 1534 that the Pope’s jurisdiction did not extend to his realm. The English church was effectively nationalised and the church *in* England became the Church *of* England. But people like John Bunyan now suffered if there were not willing to conform to the laws and dogmas of the established church.
The first American settlers sailed across the Atlantic to get away from the strictures of state religions in Europe. For the first time we read of a ‘wall of separation’between ‘the garden or religion’and the ‘wilderness’of temporal government (Roger Williams). Thus began the practice in the U.S. of church leaders and politicians advocating separation: as Tom writes ‘the former for protection, the latter to avoid interference.’ Thus began a uniquely modern phenomenon: the idea of constitutional freedom *from* religion, leading one nation (France, since 1905) towards constitutional secularism. To Tom’s knowledge no other nation has similarly legislated for a formal and legal separation of church and state. Overall, 2000 years of Christian church history led French theologian Jacques Ellul to lament that ‘whenever the Church has been in a position of power, it has regarded freedom as an enemy.’
Tom‘s interim conclusion at this point (p. 47: halfway through the book): Ít is for these reasons that Christians must be encouraged to allow some distance between the church and state – for the church’s good, if nothing else.’’
I have only one or two minor puzzles about Tom’s approach. Why does he use the (evangelically-biassed) New American Standard translation of the Bible when he could have chose a more respectable version, like the NRSV?
After some discussion over the years, the words ‘humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God’ were eventually added the ‘draft preamble’to the Australian constitution (in 1898). Section 116 is the only section to deal with religion (it’s similar to the first amendment in the U.S.): ‘The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.’
Of course there has been public discussion about all this, when, for example Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to participate in any politics, or wars, or the Exclusive Brethren similarly forbid voting (but allow many dollars to be spent lobbying for conservative political causes)’, or the Scientologists arguing (1983) that they are actually a religion and should be exempt from government taxes that other churches enjoy. Then there was the Defense of Government Schools debate, and (Tom writes) ‘the subsequent legal argument highlighted the significant differences between the US first amendment and the widely held but mistaken belief that the Australian constitution provided a “wall of separation”.
Conclusions? Át no stage do the founders of the Australian federation seem to have been motivated by a sense that engagement between religion and the state was itself an undesirable thing’(Catholic academic lawyer Joshua Puls).
A ‘wall of separation’ is impossible to maintain. Church and State… are not two societies that can be separated by the erection of a wall between them. Religion exists within a society and is part of it’ (Dr. Cliff Pannam QC).
Tom’s cautious about right-wing religious influence on the political process in Australia (he’s referring to conservative groups like the Christian Democratic Party, Family First, and the Australian Christian Lobby, and Creationism/Intelligent Design): he is concerned about the absence of strong ‘ accountability to to the broader Christian community’. A socially conservative mindset does not reflect the mindset of all Christian traditions in Australia.
He’s also critical of ‘doctrinaire secularism’, which in its extreme form in the U.S. tries to forbid mentioning God or do any religious act in the public square. Doctrinaire secularism is not religiously neutral: it actually amounts to the promotion of a type of atheism as the unofficial state religion.
But, overall, ‘I have argued that interactions between the church and the state are inevitable, and, for the greatest part, no threat to the health of the body politic.’ ‘Christianity does not need political goodwill or financial support to survive or fulfil its mission…’ but secularists can sleep easily because [quote] there is no future prospect of a religious establishment in Australia and none should be encouraged…. Unlike the U.S. Australia does not need a wall of separation between church and state, and none will be needed in the future.

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As a committed Christian who believes that religious belief should inform all of life AND that all ideas have a legitimate place in the forum of public discourse, I could not more strongly object to your remarks in the The Age, 14 November 2004 that you "respect" the role of churches, but that we should keep religion out of politics.
Given these comments, where exactly do you see religion playing a role, Mr. Latham?
I presume you it to remain a matter personal business. But my problem with your comments is that my political views ARE my personal business. That's MY personal business, Mr. Latham. NOT YOURS! Nor any other politican's. I'll be damned if I'll let any of you tell me my personal business - religious, political or otherwise.
Let me say that I believe your remarks demonstrate a complete ignorance of the entire point of the doctrine of the separation of church and state.
That doctrine is NOT primarily about keeping religion out of politics BUT about keeping politics out of religion (read the constitution).
It does NOT state that religious views may not inform political discourse BUT that political discourse may not dictate religious views.
The doctrine was NEVER intended to prevent free expression of religious views in the public marketplace of ideas. Rather it was intended to ensure that the public market place is open to influence from ALL points of view - even ideas that politicians like yourself might not agree with.
At the end of the day, if freedom and democracy mean anything, they mean the right of the individual to bring their personal beliefs into the sphere of public discourse REGARDLESS of the religious, philosophical, or political basis of those beliefs.
To reject that is to impose restrictions on the very religious discourse that our system of politics is supposed to defend.
Last Friday evening, 1 Sep 2006, Right Reverend Doctor Tom Frame, Anglican Bishop to the Australian Defence Force and well known author and social commentator, addressed the 2006 "Christians in Defence" Fellowship Dinner in Canberra. His address, titled "Church-State Relations in Australia and Christian Fidelity", is available on the web site of the Military Christian Fellowship of Australia
http://www.mcf-australia.com
For the direct link, see http://www.mcf-australia.com/images/2006dinner/Frame_MCF_Dinner1.rtf
Tom Frame is always thought-provoking, and he did not miss this opportunity either. Here are some snippets.
"The relationship between politics and religion, Church and State, have become an ideological battleground-once again. This time, the struggle is not between rival Christian denominations but between those with religious beliefs and those with none. There are those who are offended by any public displays of Christian faith and appalled that Church people would want to shape public policy. This makes the position of every Christian... a complicated, and even controversial, one. ...
The first followers of Jesus realized that faith in him was costly. He not only demanded their commitment in body, mind and spirit, being his discipline cost many their families and their friends as they suffered isolation and alienation from loved ones who would not walk with them in the footsteps of Jesus.
In the last decades, the church in Australia has moved from nearer the centre of public life to the periphery. There are those who lament and those who welcome this shift. The former believe the Christian cause has lost ground. Christians no longer enjoy political, social or moral ascendancy. Many clergy feel besieged or ignored. Whereas previously the church's position meant a great deal in national affairs and Christian thinkers were accorded a prime place in the public square, Christians can no longer presume they will even be heard, let alone heeded, in an increasingly indifferent and hostile society. Christians are one among many "special interest" groups vying for influence and the crowd's ear. For many in the church, it is now about winning a war of survival.
Others, however, feel no such angst. They insist that their 'alien citizenship' (a term used to describe Christians in 1 Peter) is better served by some distinction between the Christian community and secular society. Whereas Christians can affirm their participation in what Saint Augustine referred to as 'the politics of the earthly city', their true polis and their ultimate loyalty is in the Celestial City and with God. Loyalty to the earthly city is, therefore, joined to an allegiance that is usually viewed as subversive by those who do not share it. It will be 'God before Country' rather than 'God and Country'. ..."
~~~

Sightings 5/16/05
Collisions and Doubts
-- Martin E. Marty
Where to draw "the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority" (James Madison)? Or, less felicitously, where to maintain or breach "the wall of separation between church and state" (Thomas Jefferson)? When to make use of the line? Those questions are older than 1787, and today more than ever there are "collisions and doubts," as Madison called them. The line has always been messy, the wall has always had breaches, and this will always be so, as long as a dynamic republic shall last. Two newspapers on May 12 offered new examples of this fact.
In a Chicago Tribune op-ed, David McGrath, an expert on English literature and Native American affairs, complained about a 198-foot tall crucifix towering at the junction of I-57 and I-70 ("The Art of Jamming Beliefs Down Our Throats"). It stands "as close to the highway" as the state will permit, its glistening surface serving to "shout and bully with its message of Christian morals." McGrath welcomes civil controversy but finds this uncivil. And a photo of the cross suggests that it may be just this; it is overbearing, triumphalist, and more. What would Jesus do? He'd probably call such use of his cross "tacky." But where it is, is perfectly legal. If it is even as close as one inch from the legal boundary, all we can do is put on our dark glasses, glower with McGrath, and take refuge in more chaste visions of the cross and expressions of piety. Why? Because the cross is on private land. On public land it would be claiming privilege for faith over non-faith, one faith over others. Where it is, "any number can play" on equal terms.
Most misplacements of the Ten Commandments and crosses occur on courthouse lawns or classroom walls. Are these about religion? Since religion can be expressed on most private lawns and on church, home, and store walls, aren't these courthouse and classroom placements saying something political and primeval? "We belong, and you don't! We set the terms and you are marginal, unpatriotic, or wrong!" Such forms of "shouting and bullying" may be detrimental to faith and civic life.
As for the "when": The New York Times and then the Associated Press (on May 14) ran stories about Air Force Academy personnel, programs, and privileges, as well as pressures against most religions that do not focus on the "born-again" experience and orthodoxy. Details remain controversial, but charges are that anti-Semitism and anti-other religion mark some of the teaching on the premises of the Academy (the wrong "where") and during classroom and other teaching and publicizing time (the wrong "when"). Air Force Academy Chaplain Melina Morton -- who has to be trusted, because she's a fellow Lutheran -- says, "I realize this is the end of my Air Force career" because she protested and pointed to wrongs. In fairness, we have to hear more from Major General Charles Baldwin, Air Force chief of chaplains, who said the higher-ups merely sent Morton to Japan, far from Colorado Springs, and changed her duties, assigning her to serve there in her final chaplaincy days.
The Pentagon is looking into more than fifty recent complaints of religious intolerance at the Academy, and is assessing a report by Yale Divinity School professor Kristen Leslie. Leslie quoted an Air Force chaplain during basic training who warned that "those [cadets] who are not born again will burn in the fires of hell." Off premises and off time he can say that. On premises? Wrong.
Page two: Last week we commemorated Will Herberg's Protestant-Catholic-Jew fifty years after its publication, claiming that like all of us men in 1955, he made slight mention of women. But reader Bob Miller scanned the bibliography and footnotes of the book and found a dozen pioneer women's names, and a closer reading finds Herberg quoting British leader Barbara Ward on the first page. We are glad to issue this correction. Good for Will!
Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com.
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The May Religion and Culture Web Forum, featuring "Red Medicine, Blue Medicine: Pluralism and the Future of Healthcare" by Farr A. Curlin and Daniel E. Hall, is now available at http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/webforum/index.shtml.
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
[Baptist Press 2/11/98]
Christian role underscored in addressing public issues
By Nedra Kanavel
JACKSON, Tenn. (BP)--Christians are called to stay determinedly active in the public arena to address the most pressing issues of our day, public policy champions said during a conference on faith and public policy at Union University, Jackson, Tenn.
About 200 people attended the Oct. 19-20 conference, titled, "Christian Faith and Public Policy: Where do we go from here?" and cosponsored by the Baptist-affiliated university's Center for Christian Leadership and the Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities.
The center's director, David P. Gushee, noted the first day's speakers talked broadly about Christian involvement in politics, while the second day's speakers addressed more specific issues, including abortion and separation of church and state.
On abortion, for example, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said the abortion issue's divisiveness shouldn't convince Christians to avoid the pro-life effort, but rather, give them hope and encouragement to continue the "struggle for hearts and minds."
"We've won in some respects, " Land said. "Most of America is uncomfortable with abortion today. Abstinence programs have been enacted, and the number of abortions has gone down."
But the fight is not over, Land said. Laws in support of abortion are still in place, and those laws "have chosen death and cursing over life and blessing."
Ultimately, Christians have a choice to make when it comes to the abortion issue, he said; they can choose to emphasize individual rights (such as those of the woman) or emphasize the human life which God has created. "For those who say we can't legislate morality, I say explain the civil rights movement," Land said.
The most effective way to affect legislation, including that of abortion, is through "prudent and principled" activity, said Michael Cromartie, a senior fellow in Protestant studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington.
One of the loudest and most accepted voices in the public squares of early America was that of the Protestant Christians, Cromartie said. But beginning with the Scopes trial of 1925, Christians began to shy away from the public arena, even going so far as to say that God's work could only be done within the church's walls.
By the late 1970s, Christian involvement in politics revived, but mainly because Christians increasingly felt the government was working against them rather than with them. "They see themselves as defendants, and not the aggressors, in the culture war," Cromartie said.
The most effective Christian activism, Cromartie said, nevertheless will come from "epistemological humility, public modesty and charity toward even our strongest opponents."
"The argument should never be whether Christians ought to be involved in social and political issues. Rather, the issue should be: on what matters should we be most concerned and what are the most prudent ways to express such convictions," Cromartie said.
Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, insisted government and religious institutions cannot afford to separate themselves.
Ridding America's public life of any religious connotation is impossible and destructive, Elshtain said, noting: "Religion contributes to political life and its mores. Religion draws people into the community and away from themselves. Religion and politics cannot be separated."
To separate the two compromises the Constitution's promise of freedom of religion, Elshtain contended. "A private religion is no religion at all. When religion is destroyed, it's not freedom but bondage," she argued.
Stephen Monsma, professor of political science and chair of the social science division at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., said there are two theories struggling for dominance when it comes to separation of church and state: a strict separationist, no-aid-to-religion theory and an equal-treatment, substantive-neutrality theory.
Those who support the no-aid-to-religion theory hold that "the religious freedom language of the First Amendment should be interpreted to mean that church and state must be kept in as separate spheres as possible and that government may not subsidize or support religion," Monsma explained.
Like Elshtain, Monsma said he believes the no-aid theory's strict policy of separation of church and state is a detriment to American society. Specifically, Monsma argued the no-aid theory has driven government in some cases to withdraw its financial support of religious-based social service organizations.
"For the poor and low-income families, the results are often truly tragic. The poor have no choice but to make use of the social and health services provided by government agencies or by private agencies the strict separationist principle would deem to be sufficiently religion-free, even when those agencies are ineffective and lack any religious commitment," Monsma said.
Jim Skillen, executive director of the Center for Public Justice in Annapolis, Md., explained why government has a mandate to be just and why Christians must stay involved in public policy.
"The person, work and authority of Jesus Christ have to do with everyone and everything in all creation. Therefore, Jesus Christ has everything to do with government and public policy. The question then is how, not whether, Christian faith is connected with public policy," Skillen said in a chapel address to an audience of about 1,000. Skillen pointed out first that Christianity is not a stranger to the world's governments. In fact, "Jesus is not a visitor to, or intruder into, a strange land," Skillen said. "This world, including human political responsibility, belongs to God through the Son even before the Son's incarnation."
That means humans, and even more so Christians, are mandated to do what they can to ensure that government and public policy are fundamentally just, he said.
"This does not mean giving in to utopian expectations about human achievements on earth through politics, " Skillen said, citing several issues that Christians can focus on, such as racial and environmental justice.
"Wholesale, legalized discrimination against black or red people was a fundamental injustice, " Skillen argued. The challenge today is for government to protect against arbitrary, racist exclusion, not necessarily make people love one another," Skillen said.
In regard to the environment, Skillen pointed out the Bible clearly explains humans are to be good stewards of God's creation, including its land, water and non-human creatures. Christians, Skillen said, should advocate "good public law that recognizes the full value of land and water" and "the interdependence of all creatures."
"The attempt to clarify government's responsibility for protecting everything from innocent life to religious freedom, from precious resources to the rights of families, is something that should compel Christians everywhere and at all times," Skillen stressed. "This is part of our Christian service, part of the way we acknowledge Christ our Lord and seek to love and serve him."
John Mere's Commemoration Sermon St Benet's Church, Cambridge
Tuesday 20 April 2004
'We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ' (II Cor. 10.5)
One of the options afforded to John Mere's preacher is to teach 'due obedyence of the subjectes to their princyes and of pupills to their tutours, of servauntes to their maisters, with some Lesson for magistrates maisters and tutours for the well ordering of their subiectes servauntes and pupills.' Reflection on obedience is likely to be an uncongenial matter these days; but the evident need for endowed sermons on the subject four centuries ago suggests that obedience has never been that popular a requirement. To be told, in any age, that your will must be educated by submission is not a welcome message.
But it is not a message that can be easily or lightly ignored by the Christian. 'Christ became obedient for us even unto death, death on a cross': the antiphon for the offices at the end of Holy Week is still echoing in the ears of some of us. Salvation is won by submission, according to the gospel. But before we allow our feelings to be revolted by what so readily seems an assault on our autonomy, we should consider what the New Testament does and doesn't say about this. Jesus is obedient, and his obedience costs him; it goes against the grain of his natural human resistance to pain and death. Yet it is a conformity not to some alien authority, to a hostile tyrant in the heavens, but to the root of his own life. He is himself the mind and heart of God; as he looks into the mystery of his own origination in the Father, he acts out who and what he is - the embodiment of the Father's will for the healing of creation.
To imitate Christ in his submission is therefore not to do violence to your own proper reality, but to discover yourself as a created being - as a being whose life is grounded in the loving gift of God and nothing else. God's will is that you live; to seek obedience to him is to seek life, as in the great exhortation in Deuteronomy to 'choose life' by receiving and obeying the Law of Moses. And this too is why the apostles can say that their obedience is owed to God rather than to human authority when they are ordered to give up what flows from their life in Christ. To submit to God is to be most directly in touch with what is most real. To refuse that submission is not to be free of an alien violence but to become an alien to yourself.
And when St Paul tells his converts to imitate him as he imitates Christ, he sets out what is the most basic form of Christian obedience. Watch me struggling to watch Christ, he says; see what it means to try and allow the ground of your very existence to come to the surface and find expression in your acts - to make every thought obedient to the incarnate mind of God. It is a struggle because we have become such strangers to our own nature as God's loved creation. But in Christ we see how a created mind, a human self like ourselves, can perfectly become transparent to God's gift, so as to be indistinguishable from the mind of God the Father. By the gift of his life in the Spirit, we can begin to 'immerse' our lives in his. And we learn - as in so much of our human experience - by watching those who have got used to the work: watching those who watch Christ.
The way of the world is to learn from each other those habits of acquisitive rivalry that dominate our relations and breed our conflicts. As Rene Girard has reminded us, we learn from each other to want what the other wants, and so to compete with the other for its possession. But in relation to Christ, to want what the other wants is to want the Father's will - that is, to want the Father's desire for mercy and joy in all beings. We cannot turn this into a matter for competition. Our Christian obedience becomes the foundation for a radically fresh vision of one another. By looking to each other to learn Christ, by looking at another's looking towards Jesus, our desires are re-formed and liberated for life in communion.
But what has this to do with the obedience that John Mere wanted expounded for subjects and pupils and servants? Simply this: Christian obedience in its biblical sense can never be just a passive conformity to commands in the hope that this will somehow ensure a reward for us. It is properly an obedience given where we see authority engaged with a truth beyond its own interest and horizon - ultimately with the truth of Christ. The obedience of the pupil, at any educational level, is rightly and credibly demanded when the very shape of the intellectual exercise is visibly to do with a mind being pressed and moulded into truthfulness by a reality that has nothing to do with the petty power games that intellectual life can sometimes produce. The best teacher, the one who has most claim on obedience, may be the one who is at times least fluent and confident, most puzzled and engaged and troubled by the truth. The best master is the one who is most visibly mastered by demands and standards that have nothing to do with the serving of his own personal interests. If obedience is a form of attention, the attentive person is the one who should command obedience.
And this is why political obedience in our age has become so problematic. Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century was able to commend the authority of the emperor Constantine on the grounds that he was constantly engaged in contemplating the heavenly Logos. It was not even at the time a very plausible case; but he had at least noticed that any Christian justification for obedience to rulers must build in some reference to their capacity to absorb truth that is not determined by their interests.
Now we do not usually look in our rulers for signs of advanced contemplative practice; nor do we say, even as Christians, that no obedience is due to unbelieving governments. But we do say that credible claims on our political loyalty have something to do with a demonstrable attention to truth, even unwelcome truth. A government that habitually ignored expert advice, habitually pressed its interests abroad in ways that ignored manifest needs and priorities in the wider human and non-human environment, habitually repressed criticism or manipulated public media - such a regime would, to say the least, jeopardise its claim to obedience because it was refusing attention. Its policies and its rhetoric would not be designed to secure for its citizens an appropriate position in the world, a position that allowed the best kind of freedom because it did not deceive or encourage deception about the way the world is. It would be concerned finally about control and no more; and so would be a threat to its citizens and others.
Christianity does not have a general prescription about the best form of government. It is not (with due respect to Tolstoy) intrinsically anarchist, nor (with due respect to Cranmer) intrinsically monarchist. It does not commend uncritical obedience. Even in the days when Anglican political thinkers argued for 'passive obedience' to hostile government (i.e. suffering the consequences of non-co-operation rather than violently resisting), there was no sanctioning of active compliance with unjust law. But equally Christianity does not commend systematic revolution. It has been realistic about the human costs of violent upheaval and suspicious of any claims to provide an entirely new starting point for political life. What it does propose is a set of questions about political authority which direct our attention to what government attends to, and to the degree to which government is capable of acting at least sometimes beyond regard for its own controlling power (examples could be multiplied, but the willingness of the UK government to remit certain cases of international debt is a case in point of this wider attention). And in the light of the basic injunction of Christian faith to be attentive to the will of God as the most true and real element in our environment, paying attention to the way in which a government pays attention becomes a proper expression of obedience.
The argument is regularly heard in discussions of contested matters of policy, especially foreign policy, that independent observers (church leaders and the like) have no God-given expertise in strategy or economics that could outweigh government's resources of information. And the point is further made that we elect governments to defend our corporate interests, not to be global statesmen and stateswomen. Both observations - while they represent an understandable impatience with ecclesiastical generalisations - are misplaced. Government will always know some things that citizens don't and probably shouldn't; but this is not an argument for civic quiescence. Some citizens also know things that governments don't know and probably should; NGO's, churches, educators and health workers may know what neither diplomacy nor intelligence are aware of; and the demand that government attend to such informal but extensive knowledge is a fair condition for recognising a governmental claim on our attention as citizens. And while it is true that we do not first expect our leaders to be world leaders, a government that ignored the concerns of other peoples in our ever more tightly interlocking global economy would be culpably failing in attention. Our national interest is never merely national in the present context.
Christian political obedience these days, then, 'due obedyence' rather than just conformity, must rest on confidence in a government's capacity for attention; it merits our attentive loyalty in very much the same way as the tutor merits that of the student - in openness to a truth that goes beyond power and interest. This is not to expect of government an impossible standard of corporate selflessness and generosity; governments have popular mandates to fulfil, not simply programmes of benevolence and justice to implement. But part of the continuing damage to our political health in this country has to do with a sense of the events of the last year on the international scene being driven by something other than attention. There were things government believed it knew and claimed to know on a privileged basis which, it emerged, were anything but certain; there were things which regional experts and others knew which seemed not to have received attention. Forgetting the melodramatic language of public deception, which is often just another means of not attending to what is difficult and takes time to fathom, the evidence suggests to many that obedience to a complex truth suffered from a sense of urgency that made attention harder. Government of whatever kind restores lost trust above all by its willingness to attend to what lies beyond the urgency of asserting control and retaining visible and simple initiative; by patient accountability and the freedom to think again, even to admit error or miscalculation. Happy the person or the government that can simply find the right, the inevitable gesture that fully fits the truth of circumstances as gracefully as the scoring of a goal.
Christian obedience is intelligent obedience, a careful questioning, a reflective and sometimes challenging loyalty. Obedience has earned a bad name because of its use as an alibi for responsibility ('only obeying orders', a phrase with nightmare resonances after the last century); but if we begin with our central paradigm for obedience we shall see that it has to do above all with the labour of discovering what truth requires of us - the truth of who we are and where we are. Whatever may have been the theology of obedience in past ages, we cannot now ignore the democratisation of knowledge and the deepened awareness of how ideological distortions may be sustained in public life. If obedience is essentially attention, a kind of looking in order to learn how to act truthfully, it is right that claims to be obeyed be tested accordingly, tested fairly and thoughtfully, not out of a corrosive cynicism about power. This is what happens in the life of intellectual institutions; it is right that it happens in the social order. It is not that we need to claim the right to remake for ourselves every decision government makes for us; that is a trivialising of democratic government, though one that is very typical of our current scene. It is possible to accept a governmental decision as lawful and proper even when I disagree, because I recognise that a process has been undertaken that has some right to be called attentive. The individual citizen may be wrong; and in any case, has a vote at the next election. But without these processes being robust and visible and involving more than just simple governmental interest at any time, the authority of government suffers. It is not that we face regular campaigns of huge public disobedience; there may be a time for these, as in the Civil Rights struggles of sixties America, but they are rightly rare, confined to cases where government's inattention has become a matter of serious and lasting injustice. It is more that we face a general weakening of trust in the political system of our nation.
To be properly and critically involved in such a system is one of the forms of political obedience: it is to put the fruits of your attention at the service of government in order to stir their attention. It is, it could be said, the attempt to make political thoughts also obedient to Christ, implicitly if not explicitly. Today we should need persuading that we are in need of exhortations to obedience in the older sense. But we should not delude ourselves that the education of the will by submission to truth is any easier or any less important (the contrary, if anything). And it is incumbent on believers to argue for and to exemplify obedient attention for the sake of Christ and in the name of Christ in all places where it is threatened by haste and self-interest - beginning (need it be said?) in the idle and selfish hearts of those who so readily talk about it and are so slow to bring their own thoughts under obedience to Christ.
ENDS
© Rowan Williams 2004
~~
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS FAITH AND POLITICS: SEPARATION OR SYNERGY? by Darren Jensen of the University of Queensland Policy Vol.21, No.3, (Spring 2005) p21-27. Religious beliefs can guide politicians while still preserving the separation of church and state. Religious contributions to politics arouse suspicion because they often proceed from outside conventional categories of modern politics. Some (eg. Latham and Vanstone) have argued that religious contributions upset the proper relationship of religious authority and liberal democracy. But the use of religious references in public debate is not contrary to the Constitution or the notion of the separation of church and state (which has to do with establishing or preferencing a religion in law), and prohibiting such contributions would, in fact, preference a rival – secularism – as the state religion. Others have argued that religion has been used to attract a right-wing constituency by ‘baptising’ a political program. It implies a manipulation of the electorate when it is highly possible that the energy actually derives from community feeling that dearly held values are being dismissed by the political and intellectual elite.
The churches’ statements actually reveal a very modest approach in which the aim is not to rule, but to be involved with the main contribution to be achieved by individuals. Jensen illustrates this extensively by reference to debate about embryos, economics and euthanasia. He concludes that a synergy between the claims of religious faith and empirical knowledge is possible.
For the full article see http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/home.htm Also see ‘Faith and Politics: the rhetoric of church-state separation’ by Darryn M. Jensen in Australian Religion Studies Review Vol. 18, No 1. For further information see http://www.aasr.org.au/

MORE GOOD PICTURES

2007-04-23T17:40:00.000-07:00

M L KING ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-23T00:35:00.001-07:00

4. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

King was a gifted African-American preacher and civil rights leader whose sermonic appeals for justice and personal activism helped change the course of American life. His prophetic words and actions resulted in his recognition as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was tragically assassinated in 1968.

Though his theological training was provided in a context of theological liberalism, as King's ministry progressed -- as pastor of Montgomery's Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, then Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church -- his preaching grew increasingly more evangelical and biblical. His sermons became more Christ-centered, with a growing emphasis on the cross.

Steeped in the rhetorical traditions of the African-American church, King displayed gifts in the pulpit and the political arena that made him one of the most compelling speakers of the century. It is important to remember that the leader of the most profound American social movement of this century described himself as "fundamentally a clergyman, a Baptist preacher."

**********

"Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of great passion, devotion, and humor. His humorous side is not frequently discussed, and though often portrayed by the media to be a rather serious, no nonsense individual, in reality he was the epitome of humor. However, while he could greatly amuse a select group of friends in private, it was his passion and devotion that caught the international spotlight.

>From his family he inherited a sense of mission that encompassed him as a

preacher and a Civil Rights leader. A major source of King's theology was the African-American church. Perhaps the greatest gift willed to King from the African-American church was that of an indomitable faith in God which reverberated through his sermons and speeches.

Of the many career opportunities King could have pursued, he chose to take a full time pastorate. Above everything else, Martin King considered himself a preacher of the gospel. Apparently King was often disappointed that he was not primarily seen as a preacher.

King was a poet and an artist in the pulpit. He saw no incompatibility between biblical preaching and preaching on relevant social issues. That is only part of his legacy to modern preachers. King has helped ministers to recover the relevance of preaching for our day, to motivate Christians to blend their theology with their ethics, and to translate their faith in God in the social, economic and political struggle, while not being afraid to use philosophy and formal reasoning.

Ultimately King breathed life back into many preachers simply through his profound approach of addressing the audience cardiologically and colonially. Just as his passion, devotion, and humor sprang from his head as well as his mind, so he directed them and his message to the head and minds of others. (Robert Smith, Professor of Preaching, Beeson Divinity School, Birmingham, AL)

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SEE http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8527.htm

STOTT ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-23T00:34:00.000-07:00

JOHN STOTT: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

John Stott is the English-speaking world's highest-profile and most acclaimed 'evangelical'. We have lunched together, corresponded a bit, mentioned each other 'in despatches' and Jan and I were privileged to attend his 80th birthday celebration at the Albert Hall in London a couple of years ago: a great man, who has, with C S Lewis, influenced more undergraduates around the world in the last half-century towards an informed acceptance of the Christian faith than anyone else.

I first really encountered John Stott by reading his Basic Christianity when at Teachers’ College in 1957. Lucid, made sense + CSL’s Mere Christianity – coherent understanding of Christ’s claims about himself – and Christ’s claims on my life. Later, at that same college when I was an InterVarsity Fellowship staffworker (I think about 1970), I was privileged to have an hour’s lunch with this great man. Our discussion mainly centred around Charismatic Renewal: and was probably one of hundreds of ‘inputs’ into his thinking between his two publications on the subject - ‘The Baptism and Fullness of the Holy Spirit’ and ‘Baptism and Fullness’. The latter publication had a much more inclusive, accepting and irenic approach to the broad subject. I like to think I might have helped a little with that… I later – probably a year later – wrote to John Stott, beginning as so many letters to him probably did ‘You probably won’t remember me…’ and within a month I got a hand-written, one page response, beginning ‘Of course I remember you…’ He certainly did, because he commended me to a Baptist congregation in Vancouver, British Columbia, which soon after called us to the pastorate there. He also must have read my little book Recent Trends Among Evangelicals, which he cited a couple of times in his book Evangelical Truth: A Personal Plea for Unity, Integrity and Faithfulness (1999).

I have sat in his audiences many times – at university missions, in public convention centres, at All Soul’s Langham Place, and, a couple of years ago, at a couple of public meetings in Melbourne (one of them in the auditorium of a church I pastored – Blackburn (now Crossway) Baptist Church. Before that, in 2001, Jan and I were in London, and were privileged to attend his 80th birthday concert in Albert? Royal Festival? Hall. He spoke for five or six minutes: a brilliant, carefully crafted summary of his Christian philosophy and commitment.

The influence of someone on your thinking can be measured by what-is-remembered-when about that person. I remember, for example, his brilliant talk on evangelical inclusiveness – ‘Don’t Let’s Polarize’ – at the Pharmacy College auditorium in Melbourne. I remember where I was (holidaying in Lord Howe Island) when I read the first (513-page) volume of Timothy Dudley-Smith’s biography of Stott. I’ve just Googled our website – it has 172 references to Stott; my ‘Desktop Google’ has 1141.

JOHN STOTT: LIFE AND IDEAS

JOHN STOTT: QUOTABLE QUOTES

8. John R.W. Stott (1921- )

A favorite preacher among evangelicals around the globe, John Stott is Rector Emeritus of All Souls Church in London and Director of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. He served at All Souls Church as assistant curate (1945-50), as Rector (1950-75), and as Rector Emeritus since 1975. He was appointed a Chaplain to the Queen from 1959 to 1991.

Since his retirement, Stott has invested much of his ministry in working with pastors, church leaders and students in the Third World. He is the author of over 40 books, including Basic Christianity and The Cross of Christ. In his book I Believe in Preaching, Stott emphasized the place of proclamation in his own ministry:

"Nothing is better calculated to restore health and vitality to the church or to lead its members into maturity in Christ than a recovery of true, biblical, contemporary preaching . . . The task of preaching today is extremely exacting, as we seek to build bridges between the Word and the world, between divine revelation and human experience, and to relate the one to the other with integrity and relevance."

**********

"When the first International Congress on Preaching was held in London in 1997, one of the most exciting elements for me was the opportunity to meet John Stott.

For so many years I have admired this gifted author and preacher, whose insights about the preaching task have meant so much to so many. His little book, The Preacher's Portrait, is one of the most meaningful volumes ever written about the nature and calling of the preacher; I cannot count the number of times I have recommended it to young pastors.

At a stage of life and a stature in which he could do whatever he wishes, Dr. Stott is today dedicating his life to helping train and encourage Christian preachers in the Third World. Only God knows the number of lives which will have been influenced for Christ because of the faithful ministry of John Stott." (Michael Duduit, Editor, Preaching)

SEE http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8527.htm

JOHN STOTT

(Watch for my review of Timothy Dudley-Smith's two-volume biography of Stott: generally inspiring, and worth anyone's investing time to read, though you'll have to skim a lot of unnecessary/irrelevant details!). (http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/14860.htm )

According to Kittel's great Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, the Greek word for salvation was used in the ancient world from Homer onwards of 'an acutely dynamic act in which gods or people snatch others by force from serious peril' whether the danger was a battle, a storm at sea, condemnation in a law court, illness or death... We use the same terminology today, when a surgeon saves a patient's life by an operation, the fire brigade saves someone trapped in a burning building, or a rescue team saves a climber stranded on a mountain rockface. In each case somebody is in acute peril. 'Salvation' means nothing unless there is a situation of grave danger from which a person needs to be rescued...
So let me ask you: have you received the salvation which the gospel proclaims? Have you trusted personally in Christ who once secured and now offers this salvation? Only then shall we be able to say from our experience: 'I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.'
John Stott, 'Salvation Today', a sermon preached in All Souls' Church of England, Langham Place, London, on 7 October, 1973. Published in All Souls' Magazine, date unknown, pp. 11-15.
~~~

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/4705.htm http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/4706.htm

~~~~~

See also:

http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8182.htm

Used & new from $1.76 Other Editions: Paperback
Excerpt - Front Matter: "... to the famous 57 varieties of Heinz grocery products ). Rowland Croucher mentions an unnamed Californian seminary ..."
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Surprise me! See a random page in this book.

FOSDICK ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-23T00:32:00.001-07:00

5. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

One of the most influential preachers of the century, Fosdick's ministry coincided with the growth of radio, contributing to his national prominence. As pastor of New York's Riverside Church, he was minister to the Rockefellers and other prominent business and civic leaders, yet he was known as an advocate of social change.

Considered by many to be the finest pulpit orator of his generation, Fosdick has had a continuing influence on the shape of American preaching into the present day. He was a practitioner of what he called "life situation preaching," a homiletical model which focused the sermon on human need and climaxed in a call to human action. Though his homiletical approach grew out of his own liberal theological views, his model gave a new shape to American preaching, including much evangelical preaching.

**********

"My first introduction to Harry Emerson Fosdick was at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, while a student there. That was back in the days when chapel was required of students. Preachers from around the area were invited to speak. This was a good education for a young man preparing for the ministry because we heard many sermon styles and many forms of delivery. On one particular Wednesday morning, I was arrested out of my boredom during chapel by a particularly stimulating sermon brought to us by one of the leading "Fundamentalists" in our area. This sermon was thoughtful, incisive, communicated quite well, and used scripture in an unusually intelligent way. It was not like so many sermons I had endured in which the preacher had laboriously beaten us over the head with unexamined propositions, but rather it was focused directly upon our needs, took us by the hand and led us in to the scriptures as the answer to the needs the pastor was discussing.

After chapel, I was discussing the sermon with one of my professors. He acknowledged that it was an exceptionally good sermon. But he commented to me that it was unusual to hear that sermon coming from that preacher because the preacher had spent a great deal of his ministery fighting "modernism." Then he went on to tell me the other reason the sermon was so unusual; it was one of Harry Emerson Fosdick's sermons, and Fosdick was the leading "modernist" of the time. He proceeded to go to his library, pulled out a book by Fosdick and opened it to the exact page and showed me the sermon. I had trouble putting all this together but I did know there was something about this sermon that was different.

Later in seminary as we began to study great preachers, I discovered Fosdick as an oasis in a dry desert. I read everything by Fosdick I could get my hands on. I saw in Fosdick, not a source of sermons but a dimension of preaching that had been withheld from me in my early development. Here were delightful subjects, well researched, magnificently focused and artistically presented, from an obvious preacher who was profoundly committed to the Christian gospel and to the church of Jesus Christ.

Like other preachers, I have stolen my share of Fosdick's sermons. I'll admit it, but so has every other preacher, whatever his theological stripe may be. But there comes a time when you can't live off another person's work. You can't be David in Saul's armor. Fosdick taught me to lighten up, not to take myself too seriously, but to take the gospel and the preaching of the gospel very seriously, and to communicate. For this, each time I step into the pulpit, I know that in one way or another, my congregation owes a great debt to him. (William L. Self, Pastor, Johns Creek Baptist Church, Alpharetta, GA)

**********

JAMES STEWART

2007-04-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

A Faith to Proclaim

In 1999, Preaching Magazine ranked James S. Stewart as the best preacher of the twentieth century, commenting that his books on preaching ?have inspired tens of thousands of preachers to strive for greater effectiveness in their proclamation of God?s Word.? In A Faith to Proclaim, James Stewart focuses on the essential message of evangelism rather than sermon preparation or delivery technique. His pointers on proclaiming the essentials of the Christian faith should be read by all who want to be more effective communicators of the Christian message. James S. Stewart (1896-1990) was a gifted Scottish preacher who taught New Testament Language, Literature and Theology at the University of Edinburgh (New College). He also served as Chaplain to the Queen in Scotland and as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He authored many books, including Heralds of God, The Strong Name, and A Man in Christ.

~~~

Revd Kurt Iver Johanson, some sermons of James S. Stewart are now available: Walking with God is the title of this book.

Stewart is a prince — an articulate NT scholar, he was a professor who found a way to preach nearly every Sunday in Scotland.

His sermons, and I read through a bundle of them, are articulate, practicable, wise, and an excellent model for those of us who need a model of a classical form of preaching. Never informal; always sound of judgment and serious in focus.

I recommend that casual, young preachers buy this volume, read it, and learn from this wonderful preacher. What most of us need is not so much a new book about preaching, but some great examples of preaching. This is one such book.

~~~

"Born in 1893, the son of a popular Bible teacher in the YMCA movement, James Stewart was an acclaimed preacher both in his native Scotland and also in America. He served as Pastor of three Church of Scotland congregations, and then joined the faculty of New College, the divinity school of the University of Edinburgh.

Though I never had the privilege of hearing Stewart preach in person, I have listened, spell-bound, to some taped sermons, and have underlined many a memorable statement in those I have read in my library. He was a preacher's preacher, possessing gifts most of us can only dream of.

I appreciate his ministry for many reasons -- his sermons were thorough-ly biblical (he argued persuasively for expository preaching), erudite without being stuffy, eloquent though not ornate, moving but not cheaply emotional, eminently practical, often conscience-piercing, and above all, God-exalting.

Yet the thing I appreciate most is his commitment to the mandate of world evangelization. In his own preaching he did not hesitate to call men and women to personal faith in Christ, and he challenged his students and others to do the work of the evangelist. In his Beecher Lectures in 1953 he declared with characteristic directness, that there is "no place today for a Church that is not aflame with the Spirit who is the Lord and Giver of life, nor any value in a theology which is not passionately missionary" (A Faith to Proclaim, p.12). In an earlier book consisting of lectures on preaching originally given to his students, he wrote that "no Church is anything more than a pathetic pietistic backwater unless it is first and fundamentally and all the time a world missionary Church" (Heralds of God, p. 30). (William Hogan, Professor Emeritus of Preaching, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, MS)

See http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8527.htm

~~~

Rediscovering Preaching: Preach the Word!

April 2007

By Denton Lotz, General Secretary

What is the state of preaching in your country or local setting? It seems that everywhere I go in the world there is a concern about the state of preaching. Some even question whether worship services need a sermon.

The fact is, every renewal in the church has been accompanied by good preaching. Jesus is our model preacher, and then the New Testament preachers, Paul and Peter, and the early Apostolic Fathers Chrysostom, Nazianzus, etc. After a 1000-year period of Christendom and the Dark Age of preaching, Martin Luther and the Reformation resurrected the sermon as central to Protestant worship. The Baptist tradition of preaching in the 19th century was influenced by George Whitfield and John Wesley. Of course, Charles Spurgeon became the classic model for Baptist preachers at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. Even today Spurgeon is a model. The great German Lutheran scholar and preacher, Helmut Thieleke, told his students, “Sell all that you have and buy Spurgeon.” He made popular Spurgeon's advice to young preachers in the book, Encounter with Spurgeon. (Every generation does not need to debate whether or not worship services need sermons. They do. But, the style of preaching varies and this is what young seminarians need to study.)

Throughout the history of the church there have been complaints about the inability of preachers to preach. Even during the Reformation, Luther complained that some preachers and their sermons were so boring that “They could not lure a dog from behind a warm stove.” The great Scottish New Testament scholar and preacher, James Stewart, complained that many preachers of his generation had “hoof and mouth” disease—“they wouldn't visit and they couldn't preach!” For example, today's young preachers are taught the “conversational method” of preaching, which often is existential and encourages stories of the pastor's daily experiences with family and church members. One of the problems with this type of modern preaching is that it ignores the golden rule of the sermon illustration—the illustration should not be greater than that which it illustrates! Preachers often become actors and think that the more laughs they have from the congregation, the better their sermon has been.

Preaching is basically, as Phillip Brooks stated, “The communication of truth through personality.” Every preacher is different, but what is needed today is faithfulness to the Scripture text and passion. Do you really believe what you are preaching? If so, preach it with the power of the Holy Spirit, prayer and the power of conviction. Basically the state of preaching is the state of a generation's spiritual depth, of the individual and the society. We need a new generation of Holy Spirit-filled passionate preachers who love Jesus Christ and will die to make Him known, loved and followed!

SANGSTER ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-23T00:08:00.000-07:00

William Edwin Sangster

1900 -- 1960

Never taken to a place of worship for the first eight years of his life, Sangster found his way into an inner-city London Methodist mission where he happily attended Sunday School for years. When he was twelve a sensitive teacher gently asked him if he wanted to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. "I spluttered out my little prayer", he wrote years later. "It had one merit. I meant it."

From that moment the gospel of Jesus Christ absorbed Sangster for life. Subordinate only to it was an obsession with recovering Methodist conviction and expression. Never possessed of a sectarian spirit, never a denominational chauvinist, he yet believed ardently that Methodism's uniquenesses were essential to the spiritual health of Britain and to the well-being of the church catholic.

Military service followed, then studies in theology (with distinction in philosophy), and finally ordination. Short-term pastorates in Wales and northern England exposed him as a daring innovator and startling preacher. Never afraid of (apparent) failure, he was willing to try anything to reach the indifferent and the hostile. (Church-attendance in Britain had peaked in 1898, declining every year thereafter.) His first book, God Does Guide Us, paved the way for the second, Methodism Can Be Born Again. Now his alarm, even horror, at the careless squandering of the Wesleyan heritage was evident as he pleaded with his people and sought to draw them to the wellsprings of their denomination.

The outbreak of World War II found him senior minister at Westminster Central Hall, the "cathedral" of Methodism. The sanctuary, seating 3000, was full morning and evening for the next 16 years as Sangster customarily preached 30 to 45 minutes. As deep and sturdy below ground as Central Hall was capacious above, its basement became an air-raid shelter as soon as the German assault began. The first night was indescribable as thousands squeezed in, high-born and low, adult and infant, sober and drunk, clean and lousy. Equally adept at administration and preaching, Sangster quickly laid out the cavernous cellar in sandbagged "streets" so as to afford minimal privacy to those who particularly needed it. Sunday services continued upstairs in the sanctuary. A red light in the pulpit warned that an air-raid was imminent. Usually he chose to ignore it. If it were drawn to his attention he would pause and say quietly, "Those of a nervous disposition may leave now" -- and resume the service. While his wife sought to feed the hordes who appeared nightly, he assisted and comforted them until midnight, then "retired" to work until 2:00 a.m. on his Ph.D thesis for London University. (The degree was awarded in 1943.) As space in the below-ground shelter was scarce, he and his family lived at great risk -- a Times reporter interviewed him for his obituary! -- for five years on the hazardous ground floor. They slept nightly in the men's washroom amidst the sound of incessant drips and the malodorous smells. By war's end 450,000 people had found refuge in the church-basement.

In 1949 Sangster was elected president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain. The denomination's leader now, he announced the twofold agenda he would drive relentlessly: evangelism and spiritual deepening. He knew that while the Spirit alone ultimately brings people to faith in Jesus Christ, the witness of men and women is always the context of the Spirit's activity. By means of addresses, workshops and books he strove to equip his people for the simple yet crucial task of inviting others to join them on the Way. The second item of his agenda was not new for him, but certainly new to Methodist church-members who had never been exposed to Wesleyan distinctives. He longed to see lukewarm pew-sitters aflame with that oceanic Love which bleaches sin's allure and breaks sin's grip and therefore scorches and saves in the same instant. He coveted for his people a whole-soulled, self-oblivious, horizon-filling immersion in the depths of God and in the suffering of their neighbours.

In all of this he continued to help both lay preachers and ordained as books poured from his pen: The Craft of the Sermon, The Approach to Preaching, Power in Preaching. Newspapers delighted in his quotableness: "a nation of pilferers", "tinselled harlots", "the pus-point of sin". Yet his popularity was never won at the expense of intellectual profundity. The ablest student in philosophy his seminary had seen, he yet modestly lamented that Methodism lacked a world-class exponent of philosophical theology -- even as he himself appeared on an American "phone-in" television program where questions on the philosophy of religion had to be answered without prior preparation. Ever the evangelist at heart, he rejoiced to learn that two million viewers had seen the show.

Numerous engagements on behalf of international Methodism took him around the world and several times to America. While lecturing in Texas he had difficulty swallowing and walking. The problem was diagnosed as progressive muscular atrophy, an incurable neurological disease. His wife took him to the famous neurological clinic in Freudenstadt, Germany -- but to no avail.

His last public communication was an anguished note scribbled to the chief rabbi as a wave of antisemitism engulfed Britain in January 1960. Toward the end he could do no more than raise the index finger of his right hand. He died on May 24th, "Wesley Day", cherished as the date of Wesley's "heart strangely warmed" at Aldersgate with the subsequent spiritual surge on so many fronts.

Everything about him -- his philosophical rigour, his fervour in preaching, his affinity with saints who had drawn unspeakably near to the heart of God, his homespun writings (Lord,Teach Us To Pray), his genuine affection for all sorts and classes -- it all served one passion and it was all gathered up in one simple line of Charles Wesley, Methodism's incomparable hymn-writer:

"O let me commend my saviour to you."

~~~

W. E. Sangster Memories of a Great Leader

Margaret Phippen is a brisk, down-to-earth lady who, one feels, is not someone who suffers fools gladly. She also happens to be the daughter of one of the most loved and admired Christian leaders and preachers this country produced in the 20th century - the Rev Dr William E Sangster, Methodist doyen who walked as easily with kings and princes as he did with the inhabitants of slum areas who flocked to hear him preach.

W E Sangster died 45 years ago, in 1959, absurdly early, just when the full flowering of his preaching and teaching looked set to set an even more lasting stamp on the nation. By that time he had risen from a working-class district of Lancashire to command the pulpit, for 15 years, at Westminster Central Hall, then Methodism's headquarters. There he preached to packed congregations of 3,000 every Sunday, many of whom had queued for up to an hour to get into the auditorium. This has never been equalled since.

His name was revered throughout Methodism and he had – still has – many admirers throughout this country and overseas, many of whom heard him during his many preaching tours and also as President of the Methodist Conference. They can testify to his zest in the pulpit and his general bonhomie, which everyone found very attractive. He was well known as well outside the Methodist Church, becoming a kind of 'Mr Preaching Everyman' at conferences throughout the country, including the Filey Convention, the precursor of Spring Harvest. He was also a contemporary of two other Methodist 'giants' of the time in Dr Leslie Weatherhead (at the City Temple) and Dr Donald Soper (at the West London Mission).

But to those who knew him, Dr Sangster was much more than a larger-than-life pulpit giant whose waves of oratory would sweep over a vast audience, subduing, challenging, enlightening or encouraging as the sermon might dictate. He came out as a strong supporter of Dr Billy Graham when the latter was being constantly sniped at and 'put down' by an assortment of religious leaders, many within the Methodist Church.

Sangster's output of books and pamphlets was prolific, and they are still read to this day. Such titles as The Secret of Radiant Life, Why Jesus Never Wrote a Book, God Does Guide Us, and Let Me Commend have been reprinted many times. Thousands of local preachers were indebted to him for his homiletical works, such as The Approach to Preaching and The Craft of the Sermon.

Margaret Sangster was born in Conway, North Wales, the setting for her father's first appointment as a married man. The family was constantly on the move in those early years, averaging a new circuit every three years initially. She shared with her by-then famous father in the London Blitz, living five years with him, and about a thousand others, in the underground shelter where she and her mother had the dubious delight of sleeping in a men's urinal! Her husband, the Rev. Dennis Phippen, was an ordained missionary to India, and that is where she went after their wedding for many years. Margaret now lives in Worthing, West Sussex, where she and Dennis had moved in 1979 when he was appointed superintendent minister. Here she gives a priceless insight into what he was like as a father, as a wise counsellor and, above all perhaps, an instant friend to all those whom he met.

Mrs Phippen recalls that her father's overwhelming characteristic was his zest for life. She says that his personality so glowed that for those near him, including his children, 'he lit up the whole world'. 'In my early days he was already becoming famous as a preacher and a pastor – incidentally, he used to test his sermons out on my mother. He loved God with the whole of his passionate nature and he longed only that others should love him, too. He worked away all day but was always ready in time of real need to drop everything and take one of his children in his arms. He was all love and all compassion'.

'Saturday afternoons were the one time in the week when we could be sure of our father for ourselves. On that afternoon, then, we were all together – my parents, who adored each other and lived a love story every day of their life, my brother (Paul) and I. As I look back, I seem to have spent much of my childhood padding wearily after his tireless form to look at an old abbey or castle, or just the scenery'.

In September, 1939, when he was just 39, Dr Sangster was moved from his Leeds church to London, where he took over the Central Hall, Westminster. It was the month that war broke out and his first announcement to his new congregation was that Britain had declared war on Germany. Mrs Phippen recalls that during the first year of the so-called 'phoney' war, her father turned the Central Hall into a family church. Hundreds and then thousands flocked to hear him, a prince of preachers indeed.

'Most of all, though, his influence was felt in personal lives. Everyone mattered to him, everyone was loved by him. He never forgot a name or a face'.

In 1940 the bombing of London began. Homeless people from the slums of nearby Pimlico needed accommodation, and Dr Sangster threw open the Central Hall's reinforced basement, which became one of the biggest air-raid shelters in the country, the permanent home for up to a thousand people every night.

'He and his family moved in to share it with them, modestly taking one small room in which we were to eat, sleep and live for five years. My mother hastily organized a canteen and provided cheap, good food every night. "Service before services", said my father as he moved among the people, his fund of funny stories, his interest and his love charming all suspicion away. Determined to offer no religion until it was asked for, he was soon begged to take evening prayers, and it became a permanent institution, along with a weekly lecture on current affairs and a Saturday concert. He welded the whole into one huge, happy family. A suspicion even grew up that if he were in the shelter it would not be bombed!'

'And the work in the church above grew and grew. To keep himself sane in crowded days and more crowded nights, my father snatched minutes from his bed to study Christian perfection and wrote a thesis for which London University awarded him a doctorate in philosophy'.

With peace in 1945 the work blossomed with a crowded, glowing church, spiritually at ease. Book followed book, with lecture tours to many parts of the world. In 1950 Dr Sangster became the youngest-ever President of the Methodist Conference and he was genuinely surprised at the honour.

'Travelling home in the train afterwards, his robes on the luggage rack, he met a lonely young naval cadet and together they played at train-spotting, the boy and the President racing from window to window with equal enjoyment!' - revealing a man utterly at home with himself and possessed of an impish delight in simple things.

'“Let's dance", he would whisper on a lonely road, and the two of us would gambol gaily along the pavement, his grey curls on end, and his clerical collar jumping about to his shouts of laughter. You see, he never knew a waltz from a fox-trot!'

In 1955 Dr Sangster was asked to take charge of the Home Mission Department for the whole of British Methodism. He plunged into his new work, administering a great department and travelling continuously – a new bed, a new sermon, nearly every night. He prayed and sweated for a new awakening of the Christian faith. Three years later he was conscious of uneasiness in his throat and dragging in his leg. He went on with his work but soon he could not avoid seeing a doctor and was diagnosed with incurable muscular atrophy. The muscles would gradually waste, the voice go, the throat be unable to swallow. He had thought there would be years of hard work ahead.

In Mrs Phippen's words: 'From dark despair he battled through to triumphant assent. He could still write. He would have more time for prayer. "Let me stay in the struggle, Lord", he pleaded. "I don't mind if I can no longer be a general, but just give me a regiment to lead". Against increasing limitations he forced himself to work. "Why, I'm only in the kindergarten of suffering", he answered sympathizers with his infectious gaiety.

'Gradually his legs became useless and his voice – that melodious organ that had thrilled thousands – went completely. Speechless and helpless, he could still hold a pen. He was radiant. On and on he wrote. Utter suffering, utter acceptance. His delight in my mother never faltered, nor she in her great courage. "You are wonderful" her would write to her with shaking hand, his pen now his only means of communication'.

'On Easter Day he wrote to me, "It is terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout, 'He is risen!' but it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not to want to shout".'

W E Sangster died in May 1959, on Wesley Day. He died before his right hand had completely failed, still in the fight for his faith. Perhaps Dr Sangster's Christian ethos may be summed in a sentence he wrote for the preface of his book, The Secret of Radiant Life: 'Men and women were made for God; all parts of our personality are drawn to health when he is resident within'. This great Methodist leader was a shining example of just that.

~~~

Many Witnesses, One Lord by William Barclay

William Barclay has also written A New Testament Wordbook, More New Testament Words, Letters To The Seven Churches, The Master’s Men, and Flesh and Spirit, The Mind Of Jesus, Crucified and Crowned, and Jesus As They Saw Him. This material prepared for Religion-Online by Paul Mobley.

Chapter 12: Preaching The New Testament Today

In any engagement it is always wise to see just what we are up against. What then is the situation which meets us when we try to preach the NT today? To put it in another way, what is the situation which faces us when we try to communicate the gospel, not so much to the people inside the Church as to the people outside the visible Christian fellowship?

(a) Unquestionably, we face ignorance of the basic facts of the Christian story. W. E. Sangster tells how in 1947 Admiral Sir Geoffrey Layton carried out an experiment with regard to the lads who in that year joined the Navy, and who, it must be assumed, must have been rather above the average in intelligence. Only 15 per cent could repeat the Lord's Prayer accurately; 28 per cent knew it in part; 49 per cent knew no more than the opening words. Although 72 per cent knew who Jesus Christ was, only 39 per cent knew where he was born. What happened on Good Friday was known to 62 per cent, but only 45 per cent knew the meaning of Easter, and only a little more than 2 per cent could explain Whitsuntide. From one point of view this ignorance is a handicap, because it means that we can assume little or nothing in our approach to people outside the Church. From another point of view it is an advantage, for it means that what we have to tell them is for them a new discovery.

(b) Equally unquestionably, we have to face a situation in which the Christian message and the Church have become to many a complete irrelevance. Fairly recently the Sunday Post, a newspaper which is entirely well-disposed to the Church and to religion, conducted an investigation into the reaction of young people to religion and to the Church. A nineteen-year-old clerk said: "I don't believe in God. I don't believe in religion whatsoever." A nineteen-year-old apprentice accountant said: "Christianity is a thing of the past. It's dying out rapidly. 1 won't be sorry to see it go. Church? Nor for me." A nineteen-year-old science student said: "Religion has no place in modern society. They repeat the same things over and over again." The conviction of the irrelevance of the Church was equally marked. A twenty-year-old student said: "The ideals the Church preaches are all right, but you don't need a Church to know how to behave." A twenty-year-old art student said: "I believe I can stay in contact with God without doing it publicly." A lad of sixteen said: "Church drives me up the wall. It's not worth getting out of bed for. None of my pals go to Church either."

It has to be noted that in no case is there any particular hostility to the Church. There is complete indifference to an institution and a belief which has simply ceased to have any relevance.

Clearly, the next question is: What has the Christian preacher to offer to meet this situation?

He has his preaching, and it has been pointed out that there are four kinds of preaching. There is kerugma, which is the uncompromising statement of the facts of the Christian faith. This is proclamation without argument. There is didache, which is the explanation of these facts, both as they are problems for the mind, and as they are matter of practical life and conduct. In other words, there is the development of the kerugma into Christian theology and Christian ethics. There is paraklesis, which is exhortation to accept the Christian faith and to live the Christian life. There is homilia, which is the treatment of any subject in the light of the Christian message. Somewhere within these different spheres the Christian preacher will move.

Clearly, the next question is: What has gone wrong? Why is it that Christian preaching in so many cases is no longer effective? Certain causes are almost immediately identifiable even if we go no further than look at these four different kinds of Christian preaching.

(a) It is clear that somewhere the balance has gone wrong. There is any amount of homilia, the general treatment of almost any subject in the form of a kind of Christian and moral essay. There is an equally large, if not still greater, amount of paraklesis, of the kind of exhortation which is a kind of Christian pep-talk. There is not a great deal of kerugma, for it is a strange feature of the Christian message today that it has become apologetic -- in both senses of the word -- rather than dogmatic -- again in both senses of the term. But the real disaster of the situation is the absence of didache, the neglect of the teaching ministry of the Church. One of the main faults of so much modern preaching is that it lives from day to day, looking each week for a "good text", instead of being a systematic and planned exposition of the Christian faith and of the Bible. There is little good in exhorting people to be Christian, when they have no clear idea of what being Christian means.

(b) There is the use of religious jargon, or, to put it in another way, the use of conventional religious words and expressions without any definition of them. W. E. Sangster told how Dr William D. White carried out an experiment in which he asked twenty-five intelligent people in his congregation to make a list of words and phrases, commonly used in preaching, which they did not understand. The list included such words as dayspring, logos, husbandman, washed in the blood of the Lamb, cherubim and seraphim, throne of mercy, heir of salvation, alpha and omega, things of the flesh, balm in Gilead, the bosom of Abraham, in Christ. It may well he that there are many who fail to understand still greater phrases like the Kingdom of Heaven, justification by faith, sanctification, atonement, eternal life, simply because they are so often used but so seldom expounded and explained.

The great characteristic of the language and the thought of the NT is that it was completely contemporary. It is the simple linguistic fact that, apart from the papyri, the NT is the supreme monument of Hellenistic Greek, Greek as the ordinary man spoke it in the first century AD. And further, it is the supreme characteristic of the NT that it uses categories of thought which were completely familiar to the people to whom it spoke. And the problem which faces us today is precisely the problem of persuading ourselves to admit that these categories of thought are quite alien and strange to the mind of the twentieth century and have to be reminded and restated in the language and the thought of today. It may well be that it is a basic mistake of a great deal of the presentation of the Christian message that it is offered in first-century categories of Jewish and Hellenistic thought expressed in Elizabethan English.

(c) However much we may hesitate to say it, it has to be said that a great deal of modern preaching is essentially trivial in its nature. W. E. Sangster said that "a great deal of Protestant preaching for a generation past has been on marginal things". Bishop Kulandram, looking with oriental eyes on western preaching, said that what struck him most was "its astonishing silence on deep theological issues". When that famous preacher Leslie J. Tizard was dying, and when he was thinking of what preaching had to say to a man with incurable and inoperable cancer, he quoted a saying of J. B. Priestley that people get a bit sick of having the front of their minds tickled, when they want something "which goes deeper". A group of intelligent people deeply regretted that the older didactic and exegetical sermon has so much given place to the topical address.

Clearly, the next and the last question must be: In what direction lies the cure? It lies in three directions.

(a) It lies in a revival of expository preaching. To put it very bluntly, it is the fact that people are not very interested, at least they are not interested for long, in hearing any man's opinions about all kinds of things political, social and economic; they are interested in trying to find out what the Bible has to say. And it is there that the preacher can help them. He has been deliberately trained in linguistic, historical, archaeological, theological study in a way which enables him to discover the meaning of, and thus to expound, scripture in a way that is simply not open to the layman. The whole aim of his training is to do precisely that. It is in fact the one thing that he can do better than the layman. The first thing that is needed from all pulpits is systematic exposition of scripture and systematic explanation of Christian doctrine, with the application of both to the human situation of the particular sphere of the hearers in the twentieth century.

(b) It lies in an approach of sheer honesty. This will involve the abandonment of conventional religious language which has ceased to be meaningful even to the preacher. It will involve the refusal to mutter pious platitudes. It will involve the frank admission by the preacher that there are problems before which he can only stand silent and go on seeking. A reverent agnosticism can be on occasion a better evangelism than a religion which knows all the answers.

(c) It will involve a total approach to the New Testament. One of the worst of all mistakes is to standardize one religious experience, and to speak and to preach as if there were no other. The NT has its John and James as well as its Paul. The amazing thing about the NT is its frank ad-mission that there are many ways to God, and the mistake which so many of us make, which maybe we all make, is to limit our preaching to that which specially appeals to ourselves. It is necessary to expound the full-orbed teaching of the New Testament, to remember that, while there is one Lord, there are many witnesses, and, when we set ourselves to do that we will undoubtedly find that parts of scripture which we thought had nothing to say to us become strangely and amazingly eloquent.

W. E. Sangster tells somewhere of the preacher who read himself full, thought himself clear, and prayed himself hot; and to read, to think and to pray is the only way to become a preacher in any century.

~~~

Why the Church Needs Saints, Part I
by W.E. Sangster, 1954
It cannot seriously be questioned that it is a matter of major importance that the admiration of people be directed towards those who are worthy of the admiration. We grow like the people we admire. If the longing for holiness is to be quickened in people they must see, not only its perfection in the Savior, but approximations to it in the saints. Indeed, there are ways in which it could be perilous to see it only in the Savior and never in the saints.
To quicken the quest for holiness in people - which is the end of all religious nurture - four steps are necessary.

First, to convince people that it is God’s intention that man should be holy; that nothing less can satisfy His ambitions for His earthly children and that, keeping this fact in mind, a devout man may often murmur to himself, ‘He wills that I should holy be’. Secondly, to nourish in the people faith in the possibility of holiness. The difficult question of ultimate and ineffable perfection can be left aside if only because it involves questions of completeness as well as of purity, and stretches the mind into the vast aeons of eternity. But if the promises of the New Testament are kept in mind, and there are no mental reservations about the power of the Holy Spirit, the life of constant victory over sin by the might of God can be held before the people as a possibility in this life. We can say of all the powers of hell,

They cannot keep a blessing back
By heaven designed for me.

Thirdly, to hold perfection before the people in all its fulness in Jesus. In Him every virtue is balanced with its complementary virtue! The vices of good men are often shadows cast by their virtues. Because they are so morally strong, they lack tenderness. Because they are so generous, a proper prudence is wanting. But in Jesus the balance and harmony are all there. This is perfection - the uttermost that can appear in a sinful world.

They were actions of the perfect if we recognize that our Lord was acting all the time under the motive of perfect love. To startle and recall the recalcitrant in the case of the Pharisees: to defend the Gentiles from the desecration of their Court of the Temple, and to impose discipline on the shabby traders, in the case of that illicit commerce. Love in conflict with sin must hurt to save. His life reveals an utter perfection - i.e. a life moved always by a perfect motive even though it was moving in an imperfect world.
And it is just because he is himself in that world that the plain man finds Jesus’ example completely beyond him, and the need for the witness of the saint appears. Gazing on perfection in Jesus, sinful man is both abashed and abased. He hears the hammer strokes through the prayer of his Savior as they nail the suffering Son of God to the wood: ‘Father! ...Forgive them!...They know not what they do!’...and he knows he is looking on the holy and feels profane. Indeed, he feels the oneness of the human race and that his own fist swings the hammer which transfixes the hand that moved only to bless.

A voice awakens in his soul. ‘I could never be like that. It is blasphemy to think it. This is God and I am a sinner. I was conceived in sin, and the seed was tainted before I was conceived. I was shaped in iniquity, born into a wicked world, and I have drawn in sin with every breath. The whole mental and moral atmosphere of humanity is heavy with decay. And to this foul earth I belong, and within this body of death I am imprisoned, and I am ashamed even to lift my gaze to the One who is of “purer eyes than to behold iniquity”‘.

By a strange contortion of the human mind the very perfection of Our Lord’s example is used to excuse men from following it. His Person is extolled to explain the majesty of His pattern - and then pleaded to excuse human sin. God incarnate could live like that but not sinful man. Need sinful man try? Need sinful man admit the obligation?

Sinful man is glad not to admit the obligation and praises the perfection of his Lord the more heartily now that he has excused himself to himself - and accepted the excuse!
So we come to the fourth step and see disclosed the great ministry of the saints. Their holinesss is all derived. It is begotten in them of God - begotten in that very human nature which man in self-despair had recognized as hopeless and corrupt.

Look at the saints! Listen to the first martyr and his magnificent echo of Calvary: ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge!’ Pass in review the noble men and women of all ages who have ‘marked the footsteps that He trod’ and come to sanctity.

God did this with tainted seed, shapen in iniquity, and begotten into a polluted world. Can anything be put beyond the power of the Holy Spirit? Alll the saints came of one diseased stock and some of them had brought forth fruit consonant with the stock from which they came. They had been open sinners, sensual, bestial and proud in it. They made a pagentry of their
evil living. Like their precursors in the faith at Corinth, some of them had been fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, abusers of themselves, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners...but now they were washed and sanctified!.

God did it! Now let the heart of man ‘deceitful above all things’ and ‘desperately sick’ deny the challenge of the saint’s example. If God could do this with men and women - and such men and women - might He not do something with me? Even me?

If those who had given hostages to evil, and trebled the carnality of nature by unholy indulgence, could be arrested, converted, washed and sanctified, is anyone beyond the reach of Christ’s redeeming and purifying power?
Augustine said:

‘To Carthage I came where a cauldron of unholy loves bubbled up all around me. I loved not as yet, yet I loved to love; and, with a hidden want, I abhorred myself that I wanted not. I searched about for something to love, in love with loving, and hating security, and a way not beset with snares...For this reason my soul was far from well, and, full of ulcers, it miserably cast itself forth, craving to be excited by contact with objects of sense...To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I succeeded in enjoying the person I loved. I befouled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I dimmed its luster with the hell of lustfulness; and yet, foul and dishonorable as I was, I craved though and excess of vanity, to be thought elegant and urbane. I fell precipitately then...’

And this was the man whom God made into a saint so mighty that he over- tops the ages, ranks as second figure in the great Evangelical Succession, and spreads the brightness of his sanctity through all the centuries since.

No branch of the church could exist without saints. Indeed, their presence is one proof that it is a true branch of the vine. Only God can make a saint. God, therefore, is in any branch of the church in which they grow. It would be a telling part of the answer of any Christians to those who would unchurch them, simply to say: ‘Look at our saints’. How the saint is defined, and whether or not precision in definition is possible, is a subject which must engage us later. Our present concern is only to stress the church’s need of saints. Not only is their presence in the church proof of God’s presence also, but a chief means in the education of those who come after.

There is that in the soul of man which must respond to the highest in virtue. It may not respond at once. Human nature can easily be over-faced by examples too remote and austere. Moreover, human nature can easily deny God because the whole race has long been in rebellion against Him. Yet there is that in human nature which calls out to the supreme examples of virtue: owns, as it were, the intention of God who made it, and feels the unmistakable homesickness of the soul.
And it is part of the service of the saints to awaken that homesickness of the soul in men and women. It does not exhaust their service to our poor race. Taken in its wholeness, their service is many-faceted. They often bring a revival of religion. It was of revival that Lacordaire was thinking when he said: ‘ O God, give us some saints’. All France went to Ars in the second quarter of the nineteenth century to see the most lowly-born and ill-instructed priest in the country because he was a saint. The church is revived by the power of the Holy Spirit through the saints.

The saints are the most convincing answer to atheism and agnosticism. They do not usually answer them philosophically. In some mystic way they make it impossible for others to live near them and disbelieve. In the mixed character of Voltaire - nobility and cynicism strangely blended - there was much mockery of religion. But a contented atheist he could not be. Asked by a skeptical friend one day if he had ever met anyone like Jesus Christ, he lapsed into silence and then answered with awe-ful seriousness: ‘I once met Fletcher of Madeley’

Nothing but an increase of saints will make the church powerful in the world. The Holy Spirit is the Lord and Giver of Life. As He comes to sanctify, so He comes in power. The world could not long ignore a holy church. The church is not despised because it is holy: it is despised because it is not holy enough. There is not enough difference between the people inside the church and those outside to be impressive. A church in which saints were as common as now they are rare would convict the world, if only by contrast. Sanctity cannot be ignored. Even a little bit is potent. So far from the gates of hell prevailing against it, it hammers on their triple steel.
The saints are the chief hope of reunion. They link loving hands while mere ecclesiastics eye each other with suspicion and moil for a formula. Deep calleth unto deep. All the saints belong to one communion. That truth is obscured now by church divisions but only in the Church Militant. When the saints meet at the throne in the Church Triumphant they meet with the ardour of love.

Holding up the saints before the people helps them in a dozen different ways. They see the Lord reflected in His servants. They see what God can do with human nature. The saints are not obstructions to Jesus but interpretations of Him. Quoting Newman’s assertion, ‘and if Antichrist is like Christ, Christ, I suppose, is like Antichrist’, G.K. Chesterton says of St Francis of Assisi, ‘If St Francis was like Christ, Christ was to that extent like St Francis’. The overwhelming majesty of our Lord’s example is mediated through His servants and the impulse to deny the obligation to live by that pattern on the grounds of His Deity is thwarted.

‘This you can be!’ Unaware of it themselves, that is what the saints are saying all the time.

It would never occur to them to say it aloud. It is doubtful if they ever think it. One of the most gracious dispensations of God concerning His saints is their lovely unawareness of sanctity. The nearer they move to Him, the more conscious are they of sin. If it were impossible at times not to note their own growth in grace, it were impossible also to forget that it was all by His power. If they could be persuaded to admit their progress and talk of it at all, the language of their heart would be this: “If God could do this in me, He could do it in anyone’.

More than that it would be unreasonable to ask of them.

~~~

7. William Edwin Sangster (1900-1960)

A strongly evangelical Methodist preacher, he served for sixteen years as pastor of London's Westminster Central Hall, where he preached weekly to 3,000 souls. During World War II he had the largest Sunday-evening congregation in London, filling the 2,500-seat hall, and he opened the large basement as a bomb shelter for those in need.

At different points in his ministry he succeeded two of the most popular Methodist preachers in Britain (Leslie Weatherhead and Dinsdale T. Young). He concluded his ministry as head of the home mission department of the Methodist Church, before his deterioration and death because of progressive muscular atrophy.

Sangster combined evangelical intensity with a brilliant mind and gifted use of language. As Leslie Weatherhead once described one of Sangster's books of sermons, "No chapter finishes by making you say, 'What a clever writer Sangster is.' They all make you say, 'What a wonderful Savior Jesus is.'"

**********

"It isn't easy to say how much the ethos of British Methodism shaped

W. E. Sangster and how much he shaped it. Suffice it to say that his sermons exemplify the best of that strand of homiletics in the 20th century. Though Sangster died many years before I became a minister in the Manchester and Salford Methodist Mission, I immediately recognized characteristics of his method in the sermons I heard others preach, and in the values and lifestyle of fellow clergy.

The product of a working-class family, Sangster was educated in London and Birmingham, and served in the army during World War I. He had served several churches before his appointment to Westminster Central Hall in 1939. A man of the people, he literally lived with the people, moving his family into a community bomb shelter created in the church basement during the war. Sangster's preaching was orthodox, grounded in Scripture but not necessarily expository, and called listeners to action as well as reflection. A gifted storyteller, his sermon illustrations range from accounts of the desolation of war-ravaged cities or observations about drunkenness to quotations from Matthew Arnold and John Bunyan.

His more doctrinal sermons can perhaps be likened to the hymnody of Charles Wesley, about which it has been said that whatever earthly topic they begin with, they end in heaven. Sangster's sermons look forward to God's future, encouraging the listener to trust God's promises.

The timely references in his messages may date him, yet aspects of his method provide a model for preaching in the post-modern world: knowing the world of the listener, taking the listener's experience seriously, and embodying the hope we have in Christ." (Carol M. Noren, Professor of Preaching, North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL)

sEE http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/8527.htm

SOCRATES ROUGH NOTES

2007-04-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

Socrates

This is supposed to be of Socrates,
but it was made after he had already been dead for some time,
by someone who did not know what Socrates looked like. Socrates was the first of the three great Athenian philosophers (the other two are Plato and Aristotle). Socrates was born in Athens in 469 BC, so he lived through the time of Pericles and the Athenian Empire, though he was too young to remember Marathon or Salamis. He was not from a rich family. His father was probably a stone-carver, and Socrates also worked in stone, especially as a not-very-good sculptor. Socrates' mother was a midwife. When the Peloponnesian War began, Socrates fought bravely for Athens. We do not have any surviving pictures of Socrates that were made while he was alive, or by anyone who ever saw him, but he is supposed to have been ugly.

But when Socrates was in his forties or so, he began to feel an urge to think about the world around him, and try to answer some difficult questions. He asked, "What is wisdom?" and "What is beauty?" and "What is the right thing to do?" He knew that these questions were hard to answer, and he thought it would be better to have a lot of people discuss the answers together, so that they might come up with more ideas. So he began to go around Athens asking people he met these questions, "What is wisdom?" , "What is piety?", and so forth. Sometimes the people just said they were busy, but sometimes they would try to answer him. Then Socrates would try to teach them to think better by asking them more questions which showed them the problems in their logic. Often this made people angry. Sometimes they even tried to beat him up.

This is what is left of the Painted Stoa, or Porch, where Socrates used to teach, in Athens.

Socrates soon had a group of young men who listened to him and learned from him how to think. Plato was one of these young men. Socrates never charged them any money. But in 399 BC, some of the Athenians got mad at Socrates for what he was teaching the young men. They charged him in court with impiety (not respecting the gods) and corrupting the youth (teaching young men bad things). People thought he was against democracy, and he probably was - he thought the smartest people should make the decisions for everyone. The Athenians couldn't charge him with being against democracy, because they had promised not to take revenge on anyone after the Peloponnesian War. So they had to use these vague religious charges instead.

Socrates had a big trial in front of an Athenian jury. He was convicted of these charges and sentenced to death, and he died soon afterwards, when the guards gave him a cup of hemlock (a poisonous plant) to drink.

Socrates never wrote down any of his ideas while he was alive. But after he died, his student, Plato, did write down some of what Socrates had said.

~~~

Socrates' Life (470 - 399 B.C.)

Socrates himself was born in Athens around 470 B.C. During the early part of his life, he seems to have followed in his father's footsteps, working as a sculptor.

As for his education, it is said that he was a student of Anaxagoras, one of the famous early philosophers of Greece. At first he spent his time studying cosmology (or the study of the nature of reality) but later abandoned this field in order to devote himself almost exclusively to ethics. He came to believe that it was his mission to act as a kind of "gadfly" to the Athenian people, provoking them into recognizing their moral ignorance. Needless to say, his constant interrogation did not endear him to all of the citizens of Athens. While Socrates developed a following among many of the more idealistic young men of Athens--Plato, for example, was a devoted disciple of his--he soon incurred the wrath of some of the most powerful men in the city.

In 399 B.C. Socrates was put on trial for atheism (not believing in the gods of Athens) and corrupting the youth of the City (by teaching them to question everything).

…

The Socratic Method

In Plato's early dialogues, the method of argumentation that Socrates uses is called the elenchos (eh-lenk-us) or examination. In these dialogues we rarely find Socrates lecturing or directly answering the questions; instead we find him asking questions of others in an attempt to lead them indirectly to the truth.

Typically Socrates will ask someone who claims to be an expert to define a moral term that he is using--the nature of piety, courage, friendship or justice, for example. He then proceeds to demonstrate that the definition that has been given is inadequate or contradictory. This leads the person with whom he is arguing to come up with other definitions, which, though more adequate, are also shown to be problematic. Most of Plato's early dialogues end inconclusively, with the person being interrogated by Socrates at a complete loss to know what he believes about the topic.

So what is the point of the elenchos if it simply leads the person being questioned to end up more confused than when he started? The answer is that Socrates' method serves both a negative as well as a positive function. Negatively, Socrates is attempting to show the individual with whom he is arguing that the view which he holds is untenable.

On the positive side his goal is to move closer to the eidos or universal definition of the thing being spoken about. In the Euthyphro, for example, the subject matter is piety, so he is looking for the form [eidos] of piety---a standard for determining which actions are pious or impious in all circumstances. Once we have this standard, he believes, we will possess certain knowledge [episteme] about right and wrong/good and bad/virtue and vice.

~~~

There will always be critics. Even when things are going pretty well, when the government is relatively stable, when more people than ever are living well, when the future looks promising -- even at these times, there are those whose need to speak out overcomes their mute acceptance of the status quo. PLATO'S description of SOCRATES shows the grizzled sage to be one such critic.

Socrates is typically Greek in his relentless questioning -- of himself, of authorities, of accepted traditions and practices. And Socrates' questioning displays another characteristic associated with the Greeks -- a belief in the capacity of the mind (rationality) to apprehend the universe and a concomitant belief in the power of language to come to terms with that understanding.

Not all Greek critics chose Socrates' direct approach. ARISTOPHANES' play Lysistrata hilariously lambastes war-mongers. Despite its playful ribaldry, Lysistrata was written at a time of great duress, when the welfare of the fragile Athenian city-state was threatened from hostile forces both inside and out. Yet, the play's parody displays its profound critique of contemporary society.

Likewise, SOPHOCLES' play Antigone is an outspoken critique of absolute power and unenlightened rule. The play details the disasters that befall a society in the midst of change, when long-accepted traditions conflict with interests of a new era.

That all people should be morally accountable for their actions is characteristic of Greek thought. For this reason, Socrates insists on accepting the punishment his fellow Athenians have meted out to him. Socrates is, to the end, a believer in democracy and the will of the majority despite his grievous doubts about honest self-questioning on the part of his fellow citizens. His friend Crito makes convincing arguments for Socrates' escape, yet the sage remains clear-thinking, hard-headed, and true to his moral principles: he accepts the sentence that has been given him. These three criteria well describe the Greeks.

~~~

Socrates was the first philosopher to focus specifically on the area of VALUES (the problems of God, the Good and the Beautiful). He did not claim an interest in "things beneath the earth and in the skies" (i.e., a knowledge of nature).

~~~

Socrates (469-399 BCE)
Socrates, an Athenian Greek of the second half of the fifth century BC, wrote no philosophical works but was uniquely influential in the later history of philosophy. His philosophical interests were restricted to ethics and the conduct of life, topics which thereafter became central to philosophy. He discussed these in public places in Athens, sometimes with other prominent intellectuals or political leaders, sometimes with young men, who gathered round him in large numbers, and other admirers. Among these young men was Plato. Socrates' philosophical ideas and - equally important for his philosophical influence - his personality and methods as a 'teacher' were handed on to posterity in the 'dialogues' that several of his friends wrote after his death, depicting such discussions. Only those of Xenophon (Memorabilia,Apology, Symposium) and the early dialogues of Plato survive (for example Euthyphro, Apology, Crito). Later Platonic dialogues such as Phaedo, Symposium and Republic do not present the historical Socrates' ideas; the 'Socrates' appearing in them is a spokesman for Plato's own ideas.

Socrates' discussions took the form of face-to-face interrogations of another person. Most often they concerned the nature of some moral virtue, such as courage or justice. Socrates asked what the respondent thought these qualities of mind and character amounted to, what their value was, how they were acquired. He would then test their ideas for logical consistency with other highly plausible general views about morality and goodness that the respondent also agreed to accept, once Socrates presented them. He succeeded in showing, to his satisfaction and that of the respondent and any bystanders, that the respondent's ideas were not consistent. By this practice of 'elenchus' or refutation he was able to prove that politicians and others who claimed to have 'wisdom' about human affairs in fact lacked it, and to draw attention to at least apparent errors in their thinking. He wanted to encourage them and others to think harder and to improve their ideas about the virtues and about how to conduct a good human life. He never argued directly for ideas of his own, but always questioned those of others. None the less, one can infer, from the questions he asks and his attitudes to the answers he receives, something about his own views.

Socrates was convinced that our souls - where virtues and vices are found - are vastly more important for our lives than our bodies or external circumstances. The quality of our souls determines the character of our lives, for better or for worse, much more than whether we are healthy or sick, or rich or poor. If we are to live well and happily, as he assumed we all want to do more than we want anything else, we must place the highest priority on the care of our souls. That means we must above all want to acquire the virtues, since they perfect our souls and enable them to direct our lives for the better. If only we could know what each of the virtues is we could then make an effort to obtain them. As to the nature of the virtues, Socrates seems to have held quite strict and, from the popular point of view, paradoxical views. Each virtue consists entirely in knowledge, of how it is best to act in some area of life, and why: additional 'emotional' aspects, such as the disciplining of our feelings and desires, he dismissed as of no importance. Weakness of will is not psychologically possible: if you act wrongly or badly, that is due to your ignorance of how you ought to act and why. He thought each of the apparently separate virtues amounts to the same single body of knowledge: the comprehensive knowledge of what is and is not good for a human being. Thus his quest was to acquire this single wisdom: all the particular virtues would follow automatically.

At the age of 70 Socrates was charged before an Athenian popular court with 'impiety' - with not believing in the Olympian gods and corrupting young men through his constant questioning of everything. He was found guilty and condemned to death. Plato's Apology, where Socrates gives a passionate defence of his life and philosophy, is one of the classics of Western literature. For different groups of later Greek philosophers he was the model both of a sceptical inquirer who never claims to know the truth, and of a 'sage' who knows the whole truth about human life and the human good. Among modern philosophers, the interpretations of his innermost meaning given by Montaigne, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche are especially notable.

1 Life and sources
Socrates, an Athenian citizen proud of his devotion to Athens, lived his adult life there engaging in open philosophical discussion and debate on fundamental questions of ethics, politics, religion and education. Going against the grain of the traditional education, he insisted that personal investigation and reasoned argument, rather than ancestral custom, or appeal to the authority of Homer, Hesiod and other respected poets, was the only proper basis for answering these questions. His emphasis on argument and logic and his opposition to unquestioning acceptance of tradition allied him with such Sophists of a generation earlier as Protagoras, Gorgias and Prodicus, none of whom was an Athenian, but all of whom spent time lecturing and teaching at Athens (see Sophists). Unlike these Sophists Socrates did not formally offer himself or accept pay as a teacher. But many upper-class young Athenian men gathered round him to hear and engage in his discussions, and he had an inspirational and educational effect upon them, heightening their powers of critical thought and encouraging them to take seriously their individual responsibility to think through and decide how to conduct their lives. Many of his contemporaries perceived this education as morally and socially destructive - it certainly involved subverting accepted beliefs - and he was tried in 399 BC before an Athenian popular court and condemned to death on a charge of 'impiety': that he did not believe in the Olympian gods, but in new ones instead, and corrupted the young. Scholars sometimes mention specifically political motives of revenge, based on guilt by association: a number of prominent Athenians who were with Socrates as young men or were close friends did turn against the Athenian democracy and collaborated with the Spartans in their victory over Athens in the Peloponnesian war. But an amnesty passed by the restored democracy in 403 BC prohibited prosecution for political offences before that date. The rhetorician Polycrates included Socrates' responsibility for these political crimes in his Accusation of Socrates (see Xenophon, Memorabilia I 2.12), a rhetorical exercise written at least five years after Socrates' death. But there is no evidence that, in contravention of the amnesty, Socrates' actual accusers covertly attacked him, or his jurors condemned him, on that ground. The defences Plato and Xenophon constructed for Socrates, each in his respective Apology, imply that it was his own questioning mind and what was perceived as the bad moral influence he had on his young men that led to his trial and condemnation.

Socrates left no philosophical works, and apparently wrote none. His philosophy and personality were made known to later generations through the dialogues that several of his associates wrote with him as principal speaker (see Socratic dialogues). Only fragments survive of those by Aeschines of Sphettus and Antisthenes, both Athenians, and Phaedo of Elis (after whom Plato's dialogue Phaedo is named). Our own knowledge of Socrates depends primarily on the dialogues of Plato and the Socratic works of the military leader and historian Xenophon. Plato was a young associate of Socrates' during perhaps the last ten years of his life, and Xenophon knew him during that same period, though he was absent from Athens at the time of Socrates' death and for several years before and many years after.

We also have secondary evidence from the comic playwright Aristophanes and from Aristotle. Aristotle, although born fifteen years after Socrates' death, had access through Plato and others to first-hand information about the man and his philosophy. Aristophanes knew Socrates personally; his Clouds (first produced c.423 BC) pillories the 'new' education offered by Sophists and philosophers by showing Socrates at work in a 'thinkery', propounding outlandish physical theories and teaching young men how to argue cleverly in defence of their improper behaviour. It is significant that in 423, when Socrates was about 45 years old, he could plausibly be taken as a leading representative in Athens of the 'new' education. But one cannot expect a comic play making fun of a whole intellectual movement to contain an authentic account of Socrates' specific philosophical commitments.

However, the literary genre to which Plato's and Xenophon's Socratic works belong (along with the other, lost dialogues) also permits the author much latitude; in his Poetics Aristotle counts such works as fictions of a certain kind, alongside epic poems and tragedies. They are by no means records of actual discussions (despite the fact that Xenophon explicitly so represents his). Each author was free to develop his own ideas behind the mask of Socrates, at least within the limits of what his personal experience had led him to believe was Socrates' basic philosophical and moral outlook. Especially in view of the many inconsistencies between Plato's and Xenophon's portraits, it is a difficult question for historical-philosophical interpretation whether the philosophical and moral views the character Socrates puts forward in any of these dialogues can legitimately be attributed to the historical philosopher. The problem of interpretation is made more difficult by the fact that Socrates appears in many of Plato's dialogues - ones belonging to his middle and later periods - discussing and expounding views that we have good reason to believe resulted from Plato's own philosophical investigations into questions of metaphysics and epistemology, questions that were not entered into at all by the historical Socrates. To resolve this problem - what scholars call the 'Socratic problem' - most agree in preferring Plato to Xenophon as a witness. Xenophon is not thought to have been philosopher enough to have understood Socrates well or to have captured the depth of his views and his personality. As for Plato, most scholars accept only the philosophical interests and procedures, and the moral and philosophical views, of the Socrates of the early dialogues, and, more guardedly, the Socrates of 'transitional' ones such as Meno and Gorgias, as legitimate representations of the historical personage. These dialogues are the ones that predate the emergence of the metaphysical and epistemological inquiries just referred to. However, even Plato's early dialogues are philosophical works written to further Plato's own philosophical interests. That could produce distortions, also; and Xenophon's relative philosophical innocence could make his portrait in some respects more reliable. Moreover, it is possible, even probable, that in his efforts to help his young men improve themselves Socrates spoke differently to the philosophically more promising ones among them - including Plato - from the way he spoke to others, for example Xenophon. Both portraits could be true, but partial and needing to be combined. The account of Socrates' philosophy given below follows Plato, with caution, while giving independent weight also to Xenophon and to Aristotle.

Xenophon's Apology of Socrates, Symposium and Memorabilia (or Memoirs) may well reflect knowledge of Plato's own Apology and some of his early and middle period dialogues, as well as lost dialogues of Antisthenes and others. Xenophon composed the Memorabilia over many years, beginning only some ten years after Socrates' death, avowedly in order to defend Socrates' reputation as a good man, a true Athenian gentleman, and a good influence upon his young men. The same intention motivated hisApology and Symposium. Anything these works contain about Socrates' philosophical opinions and procedures is ancillary to that apologetic purpose. Plato's Apology, of course, is similarly apologetic, but it and his other early dialogues are carefully constructed discussions, strongly focused upon questions of philosophical substance. Plato evidently thought Socrates' philosophical ideas and methods were central to his life and to his mission. Xenophon's and Plato's testimony are agreed that Socrates' discussions consistently concerned the aretai, the recognized 'virtues' or excellences of character, such as justice, piety, self-control or moderation, courage and wisdom; what these individual characteristics consist in and require of a person, what their value is, and how they are acquired, whether by teaching or in some other way. In his Apology and elsewhere Plato has Socrates insist that these discussions were always inquiries, efforts made to engage his fellow-discussants in coming jointly to an adequate understanding of the matters inquired into. He does not himself know, and therefore cannot teach anyone else - whether by means of these discussions or in some other way - either how to be virtuous or what virtue in general or any particular virtue is. Furthermore, given his general characterization of virtue, Plato's Socrates makes a point of suggesting the impossibility in principle of teaching virtue at all, by contrast with the Sophists who declared they could teach it. Virtue was not a matter of information about living or rote techniques of some sort to be handed on from teacher to pupil, but required an open-ended personal understanding that individuals could only come to for themselves. Xenophon, too, reports that Socrates denied he was a teacher of aret0, but he pays no attention to such issues of philosophical principle. He does not hesitate to show Socrates speaking of himself as a teacher (see Apology 26, Memorabilia I 6.13-14), and describes him as accepting young men from their fathers as his pupils (but not for a fee), and teaching them the virtues by displaying his own virtues to them for emulation, as well as through conversation and precepts. Perhaps Socrates did not insist on holding to strict philosophical principles in dealing with people on whom their point would have been lost.

In his Apology Plato's Socrates traces his practice of spending his days discussing and inquiring about virtue to an oracle delivered at the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. Xenophon also mentions this oracle in his Apology. A friend of Socrates', Chaerephon, had asked the god whether anyone was wiser than Socrates; the priestess answered that no one was. Because he was sure he was not wise at all - only the gods, he suspected, could actually know how a human life ought to be led - Socrates cross-examined others at Athens with reputations for that kind of wisdom. He wanted to show that there were people wiser than he and thus discover the true meaning of the oracle - Apollo was known to speak in riddles requiring interpretation to reach their deeper meaning. In the event, it turned out that the people he examined were not wise, since they could not even give a self-consistent set of answers to his questions: obviously, true knowledge requires at least that one think and speak consistently on the subjects one professes to know. So he concluded that the priestess's reply had meant that of all those with reputations for wisdom only he came close to deserving it; he wisely did not profess to know these things that only gods can know, and that was wisdom enough for a human being. Because only he knew that he did not know, only he was ready earnestly to inquire into virtue and the other ingredients of the human good, in an effort to learn. He understood therefore that Apollo's true intention in the oracle had been to encourage him to continue his inquiries, to help others to realize that it is beyond human powers actually to know how to live - that is the prerogative of the gods - and to do his best to understand as far as a human being can how one ought to live. The life of philosophy, as led by him, was therefore something he was effectively ordered by Apollo to undertake.

We must remember that Socrates was on trial on a charge of 'impiety'. In tracing his philosophical vocation back to Apollo's oracle, and linking it to a humble recognition of human weakness and divine perfection, he was constructing a powerful rebuttal of the charges brought against him. But it cannot be literally true - if that is what he intended to say - that Socrates began his inquiries about virtue only after hearing of the oracle. Chaerephon's question to Apollo shows he had established a reputation in Athens for wisdom before that. That reputation cannot have rested on philosophical inquiries of another sort. In Plato's Phaedo Socrates says he had been interested as a young man in philosophical speculations about the structure and causes of the natural world, but he plainly did not take those interests very far; and in any event, his reputation was not for that kind of wisdom, but wisdom about how to lead a human life. In fact we do not hear of the duty to Apollo in Xenophon, or in other dialogues of Plato, where we might expect to find it if from the beginning Socrates thought Apollo had commanded his life of philosophizing. However, we need not think Socrates was false to the essential spirit of philosophy as he practised it if in looking back on his life under threat of condemnation for impiety he chose, inaccurately, to see it as initially imposed on him by Apollo's oracle.

Despite its impressiveness, Socrates' speech failed to convince his jury of 501 male fellow citizens, and he died in the state prison by drinking hemlock as required by law. His speech evidently offended the majority of the jurors by its disdain for the charges and the proceedings; Xenophon explains his lofty behaviour, which he thinks would otherwise have been lunatic - and damaging to his reputation - by reporting that he had told friends in advance that as a 70-year-old still in possession of his health and faculties it was time for him to die anyhow, before senility set in. Furthermore, his 'divine sign' - the 'voice' he sometimes heard warning him for his own good against a contemplated course of action - had prevented him from spending time crafting a defence speech. (This voice seems to have been the basis for the charge of introducing 'new' gods.) So he would do nothing to soften his manner in order to win his freedom. Even if this story is true, Plato could be right that Socrates put on a spirited, deeply serious defence of his life and beliefs - one that he thought should have convinced the jurors of his innocence, if only they had judged him intelligently and fairly.

3 Socratic elenchus, or refutation

In cross-examining those with reputations for wisdom about human affairs and showing their lack of it, Socrates employed a special method of dialectical argument that he himself had perfected, the method of 'elenchus' - Greek for 'putting to the test' or 'refutation'. He gives an example at his trial when he cross-examines Meletus, one of his accusers (Plato, Apology 24d-27e). The respondent states a thesis, as something he knows to be true because he is wise about the matter in question. Socrates then asks questions, eliciting clarifications, qualifications and extensions of the thesis, and seeking further opinions of the respondent on related matters. He then argues, and the respondent sees no way not to grant, that the original thesis is logically inconsistent with something affirmed in these further responses. For Socrates, it follows at once that the respondent did not know what he was talking about in stating his original thesis: true knowledge would prevent one from such self-contradiction. So the respondent suffers a personal set-back; he is refuted - revealed as incompetent. Meletus, for example, does not have consistent ideas about the gods or what would show someone not to believe in them, and he does not have consistent ideas about who corrupts the young, and how; so he does not know what he is talking about, and no one should take his word for it that Socrates disbelieves in the gods or has corrupted his young men. In many of his early dialogues Plato shows Socrates using this method to examine the opinions of persons who claim to be wise in some matter: the religious expert Euthyphro on piety (Euthyphro), the generals Laches and Nicias on courage (Laches), the Sophist Protagoras on the distinctions among the virtues and whether virtue can be taught (Protagoras), the rhapsodist Ion on what is involved in knowing poetry (Ion), the budding politician Alcibiades on justice and other political values (Alcibiades), the Sophist Hippias on which was the better man, Odysseus or Achilles (Lesser Hippias), and on the nature of moral and aesthetic beauty (Greater Hippias). They are all refuted - shown to have mutually inconsistent ideas on the subject discussed.

But Socrates is not content merely to demonstrate his interlocutor's lack of wisdom or knowledge. That might humiliate him into inquiring further or seeking by some other means the knowledge he has been shown to lack, instead of remaining puffed up with self-conceit. That would be a good thing. But Socrates often also indicates clearly that his cross-examination justifies him and the interlocutor in rejecting as false the interlocutor's original thesis. Logically, that is obviously wrong: if the interlocutor contradicts himself, at least one of the things he has said must be false (indeed, all of them could be), but the fact alone of self-contradiction does not show where the falsehood resides. For example, when Socrates leads Euthyphro to accept ideas that contradict his own definition of the pious as whatever pleases all the gods, Socrates concludes that that definition has been shown to be false (Euthyphro 10d-11a), and asks Euthyphro to come up with another one. He does not usually seem to consider that perhaps on further thought the additional ideas would seem faulty and so merit rejection instead.

Socrates uses his elenctic method also in discussion with persons who are not puffed up with false pride, and are quite willing to admit their ignorance and to reason out the truth about these important matters. Examples are his discussions with his long-time friend Crito on whether he should escape prison and set aside the court's death sentence (Plato, Crito), and with the young men Charmides, on self-control (Charmides), and Lysis and Menexenus, on the nature of friendship (Lysis). Socrates examines Crito's proposal that he escape on the basis of principles that he presents to him for his approval, and he, together with Crito (however half-heartedly), rejects it when it fails to be consistent with them. And he examines the young men's successive ideas about these virtues, rejecting some of them and refining others, by relying on their own acceptance of further ideas that he puts to them. Again, he is confident that the inconsistencies brought to light in their ideas indicate the inadequacy of their successive proposals as to the nature of the moral virtue in question.

In many of his discussions, both with young men and the allegedly wise, Socrates seeks to know what some morally valuable property is - for example, piety, courage, self-control or friendship. Rejecting the idea that one could learn this simply from attending to examples, he insisted on an articulated 'definition' of the item in question - some single account that would capture all at once the presumed common feature that would entitle anything to count as a legitimate instance. Such a definition, providing the essence of the thing defined, would give us a 'model' or 'paradigm' to use in judging whether or not some proposed action or person possesses the moral value so defined (Euthyphro 6d-e). Aristotle says (in Metaphysics I, 6) that Socrates was the first to interest himself in such 'universal definitions', and traces to his interest in them Plato's first impetus towards a theory of Forms, or 'separated' universals.

In none of his discussions in Plato's early works does Socrates profess to think an adequate final result has actually been established - about the nature of friendship, or self-control, or piety, or any of the other matters he inquires about. Indeed, on the contrary, these works regularly end with professions of profound ignorance about the matter under investigation. Knowledge is never attained, and further questions always remain to be considered. But Socrates does plainly think that progress towards reaching final understanding has taken place (even if only a god, and no human being, could ever actually attain it). Not only has one discovered some things that are definitely wrong to say; one has also achieved some positive insights that are worth holding onto in seeking further systematic understanding. Given that Socrates' method of discussion is elenctic throughout, what does he think justifies this optimism?

On balance, our evidence suggests that Socrates had worked out no elaborate theory to support him here. The ideas he was stimulated to propound in an elenctic examination which went against some initial thesis seemed to him, and usually also to the others present, so plausible, and so supportable by further considerations, that he and they felt content to reject the initial thesis. Until someone came up with arguments to neutralize their force, it seemed the thesis was doomed, as contrary to reason itself. Occasionally Socrates expresses himself in just those terms: however unpalatable the option might seem, it remains open to someone to challenge the grounds on which his conclusions rest (see Euthyphro 15c, Gorgias 461d-462a, 509a, Crito 54d). But until they do, he is satisfied to treat his and his interlocutor's agreement as a firm basis for thought and action. Later, when Plato himself became interested in questions of philosophical methodology in his Meno, this came to seem a philosophically unsatisfactory position; Plato's demand for justification for one's beliefs independent of what seemed on reflection most plausible led him to epistemological and metaphysical inquiries that went well beyond the self-imposed restriction of Socratic philosophy to ethical thought in the broadest sense. But Socrates did not raise these questions. In this respect more bound by traditional views than Plato, he had great implicit confidence in his and his interlocutors' capacity, after disciplined dialectical examination of the issues, to reach firm ground for constructing positive ideas about the virtues and about how best to lead a human life - even if these ideas never received the sort of final validation that a god, understanding fully the truth about human life, could give them.

4 Elenchus and moral progress

The topics Socrates discussed were always ethical, and never included questions of physical theory or metaphysics or other branches of philosophical study. Moreover, he always conducted his discussions not as theoretical inquiries but as profoundly personal moral tests. Questioner and interlocutor were equally putting their ways of life to what Socrates thought was the most important test of all - their capacity to stand up to scrutiny in rational argument about how one ought to live. In speaking about human life, he wanted his respondents to indicate what they truly believed, and as questioner he was prepared to do the same, at least at crucial junctures. Those beliefs were assumed to express not theoretical ideas, but the very ones on which they themselves were conducting their lives. In losing an argument with Socrates you did not merely show yourself logically or argumentatively deficient, but also put into question the very basis on which you were living. Your way of life might ultimately prove defensible, but if you cannot now defend it successfully, you are not leading it with any such justification. In that case, according to Socrates' views, your way of life is morally deficient. Thus if Menexenus, Lysis and Socrates profess to value friendship among the most important things in life and profess to be one another's friends, but cannot satisfactorily explain under pressure of elenctic investigation what a friend is, that casts serious doubt on the quality of any 'friendship' they might form (Plato, Lysis 212a, 223b). Moral consistency and personal integrity, and not mere delight in argument and logical thought, should therefore lead you to repeated elenctic examination of your views, in an effort to render them coherent and at the same time defensible on all sides through appeal to plausible arguments. Or, if some of your views have been shown false, by conflicting with extremely plausible general principles, it behoves you to drop them - and so to cease living in a way that depends upon accepting them. In this way, philosophical inquiry via the elenchus is fundamentally a personal moral quest. It is a quest not just to understand adequately the basis on which one is actually living, and the personal and moral commitments that this contains. It is also a quest to change the way one lives as the results of argument show one ought to, so that, at the logical limit of inquiry, one's way of life would be completely vindicated. Accordingly, Socrates in Plato's dialogues regularly insists on the individual and personal character of his discussions. He wants to hear the views of the one person with whom he is speaking. He dismisses as of no interest what outsiders or most people may think - provided that is not what his discussant is personally convinced is true. The views of 'the many' may well not rest on thought or argument at all. Socrates insists that his discussant shoulder the responsibility to explain and defend rationally the views he holds, and follow the argument - reason - wherever it may lead.

We learn a good deal about Socrates' own principles from both Plato and Xenophon. Those were ones that had stood up well over a lifetime of frequent elenctic discussions and had, as he thought, a wealth of plausible arguments in their favour. Foremost is his conviction that the virtues - self-control, courage, justice, piety, wisdom and related qualities of mind and soul - are essential if anyone is to lead a good and happy life. They are good in themselves for a human being, and they guarantee a happy life, eudaimonia - something that he thought all human beings always wanted, and wanted more than anything else. The virtues belong to the soul - they are the condition of a soul that has been properly cared for and brought to its best state. The soul is vastly more important for happiness than are health and strength of the body or social and political power, wealth and other external circumstances of life; the goods of the soul, and pre-eminently the virtues, are worth far more than any quantity of bodily or external goods. Socrates seems to have thought these other goods are truly good, but they only do people good, and thereby contribute to their happiness, under the condition that they are chosen and used in accordance with virtues indwelling in their souls (see Plato, Apology 30b, Euthydemus 280d-282d, Meno 87d-89a).

More specific principles followed. Doing injustice is worse for oneself than being subjected to it (Gorgias 469c-522e): by acting unjustly you make your soul worse, and that affects for the worse the whole of your life, whereas one who treats you unjustly at most harms your body or your possessions but leaves your soul unaffected. On the same ground Socrates firmly rejected the deeply entrenched Greek precept to aid one's friends and harm one's enemies, and the accompanying principle of retaliation, which he equated with returning wrongs for wrongs done to oneself and one's friends (Crito 49a-d). Socrates' daily life gave witness to his principles. He was poor, shabbily dressed and unshod, and made do with whatever ordinary food came his way: such things matter little. Wealth, finery and delicacies for the palate are not worth panting after and exerting oneself to enjoy. However, Socrates was fully capable of relishing both refined and plain enjoyments as occasion warranted (see ۷).

5 The unity of virtue

The Greeks recognized a series of specially prized qualities of mind and character as aretai or virtues. Each was regarded as a distinct, separate quality: justice was one thing, concerned with treating other people fairly, courage quite another, showing itself in vigorous, correct behaviour in circumstances that normally cause people to be afraid; and self-control or moderation, piety and wisdom were yet others. Each of these ensured that its possessor would act in some specific ways, regularly and reliably over their lifetime, having the justified conviction that those are ways one ought to act - agathon (good) and kalon (fine, noble, admirable or beautiful) ways of acting. But each type of virtuous person acts rightly and well not only in regularly recurring, but also in unusual and unheralded, circumstances; the virtue involves always getting something right about how to live a good human life. Socrates thought these virtues were essential if one was to live happily (see ۴). But what exactly were they? What was it about someone that made them just, or courageous, or wise? If you did not know that, you would not know what to do in order to acquire those qualities. Furthermore, supposing you did possess a virtue, you would have to be able to explain and defend by argument the consequent ways in which you lived - otherwise your conviction that those are ways one ought to act would be shallow and unjustified. And in order to do that you would have to know what state of mind the virtue was, since that is essential to them (see Plato, Charmides 158e-159a). Consequently, in his discussions Socrates constantly asked for 'definitions' of various virtues: what is courage (Laches); what is self-control or moderation (Charmides), what is friendship (Lysis) and what is piety (Euthyphro). As this context shows, he was asking not for a 'dictionary definition', an account of the accepted linguistic understanding of a term, but for an ethically defensible account of an actual condition of mind or character to which the word in common use would be correctly applied. In later terminology, he was seeking a 'real' rather than a 'nominal' definition (see Definition; Plato ۛ6-9).

Socrates objected to definitions that make a virtue some external aspect of a virtuous action (such as the manner in which it is done - for example its 'quiet' or measured quality in the case of moderation, Charmides 160b-d), or simply the doing of specific types of action, described in terms of their external circumstances (such as, for courage, standing one's ground in battle; Laches 190e-191d). He also objected to more psychological definitions that located a virtue in some non-rational and non-cognitive aspect of the soul (for example, in the case of courage, the soul's endurance or strength of resistance) (Laches 192d-193e). For his own part, he regularly shows himself ready to accept only definitions that identify a virtue with some sort of knowledge or wisdom about what is valuable for a human being. That 'intellectualist' expectation about the nature of virtue, although never worked out to his satisfaction in any Platonic dialogue, is central to Socrates' philosophy.

Given that in his discussions he is always the questioner, probing the opinions of his respondent and not arguing for views of his own, we never find Socrates stating clearly what led him to this intellectualism. Probably, however, it was considerations drawn from the generally agreed premise that each virtue is a condition motivating certain voluntary actions, chosen because they are good and fine or noble. He took it that what lies behind and produces any voluntary action is the idea under which it is done, the conception of the action in the agent's mind that makes it seem the thing to do just then. If so, each virtue must be some state of the mind, the possessor of which constantly has certain distinctive general ideas about how one ought to behave. Furthermore, since virtues get this right, these are true ideas. And since a virtuous person acts well and correctly in a perfectly reliable way, they must be seated so deeply in the mind as to be ineradicable and unwaveringly present. The only state of mind that meets these conditions is knowledge: to know a subject is not just to be thoroughly convinced, but to have a deep, fully articulated understanding, being ready with explanations to fend off objections and apparent difficulties and to extend old principles into new situations, and being prepared to show with the full weight of reason precisely why each thing falling under it is and must be so. Each virtue, then, must be knowledge about how one ought to behave in some area of life, and why - a knowledge so deep and rationally secure that those who have it can be counted upon never to change their minds, never to be argued out of or otherwise persuaded away from, or to waver in, their conviction about how to act.

In Plato's Protagoras Socrates goes beyond this, and identifies himself with the position, rejected by Protagoras in their discussion, that the apparently separate virtues of justice, piety, self-control, courage and wisdom are somehow one and the same thing - some single knowledge (361a-b). Xenophon too confirms that Socrates held this view (Memorabilia III 9.5). Protagoras defends the position that each of the virtues is not only a distinct thing from each of the others, but so different in kind that a person could possess one of them without possessing the others (329d-e). In opposing him, Socrates sometimes speaks plainly of two allegedly distinct virtues being 'one' (333b). Given this unity of the virtues, it would follow that a person could not possess one without having them all. And in speaking of justice and piety in particular, Socrates seems to go further, to imply that every action produced by virtue is equally an instance of all the standardly recognized virtues: pious as well as just, wise and self-controlled and courageous also. Among his early dialogues, however, Plato's own philosophical interests show themselves particularly heavily in the Protagoras, so it is doubtful how far the details of his arguments are to be attributed to the historical Socrates. The issues raised by Socrates in the Protagoras were, none the less, vigorously pursued by subsequent 'Socratic' philosophers (as Plutarch's report in On Moral Virtue 2 demonstrates). And the positions apparently adopted by Plato's Socrates were taken up and ingeniously defended by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (see Stoicism ۱6). As usual, because of his questioner's role, it is difficult to work out Socrates' grounds for holding to the unity of virtue; and it is difficult to tell whether, and if so how, he allowed that despite this unity there were some real differences between, say, justice and self-control, or courage and piety. Apparently he thought the same body of knowledge - knowledge of the whole of what is and is not good for human beings, and why it is so or not - must at least underlie the allegedly separate virtues. If you did not have that vast, comprehensive knowledge you could not be in the state of mind which is justice or in that which is courage, and so on; and if you did have it you would necessarily be in those states of mind. It seems doubtful whether Socrates himself progressed beyond that point. Efforts to do that were made by Chrysippus and the other philosophers referred to above. And despite denying that all virtues consist in knowledge, Plato in the Republic and Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics VI follow Socrates to the extent of holding, in different ways, that you need to have all the virtues in order to have any one.

6 Weakness of will denied

In Plato's Protagoras Socrates also denies the possibility of weakness of will - being 'mastered' by some desire so as to act voluntarily in a way one knows is wrong or bad (see also Xenophon, Memorabilia III 9.4, IV 5.6.) All voluntary wrongdoing or bad action is due to ignorance of how one ought to act and why, and to nothing else. This would be easy to understand if Socrates were using 'knowing' quite strictly, to refer to the elevated and demanding sort of knowledge described in ۵ (sometimes called 'Socratic knowledge'). Someone could know an action was wrong or bad, with full 'Socratic knowledge', only if they were not just thoroughly convinced, but had a deep, fully articulated understanding, being ready with explanations to fend off objections and apparent difficulties, and prepared to show precisely why it was so. That would mean that these ideas were seated so deeply in the mind as to be ineradicable and unwaveringly present. Accordingly, a person with 'Socratic knowledge' could not come to hold even momentarily that the action in question would be the thing to do, and so they could never do it voluntarily.

However, Plato's Socrates goes further. He explains his denial of weak-willed action by saying that a person cannot voluntarily do actions which, in doing them, they even believe to be a wrong or bad thing to do (Protagoras 358c-e). He gives a much-discussed, elaborate argument to establish this stronger conclusion, starting from assumptions identifying that which is pleasant with that which is good (352a-357e). These assumptions, however, he attributes only to ordinary people, the ones who say they believe in the possibility of weak-willed action; he makes it clear to the careful reader, if not to Protagoras, that his own view is simply that pleasure is a good thing, not 'the' good (351c-e; see 354b-d). Although some scholars have thought otherwise, Socrates himself does not adopt a hedonist analysis of the good in the Protagoras or elsewhere either in Plato or Xenophon; indeed, he speaks elsewhere against hedonist views (see Hedonism). The fundamental principle underlying his argument - a principle he thinks ordinary people will accept - is that voluntary action is always 'subjectively' rational, in the sense that an agent who acts to achieve some particular sort of value always acts with the idea that what they are doing achieves more of that value than alternatives then thought by them to be available would achieve. If someone performs an overall bad action because of some (lesser) good they think they will get from it, they cannot do it while believing it is bad overall. That would mean they thought they could have got more good by refraining, and their action would violate the principle just stated. Instead, at the time they acted (despite what they may have thought before or after acting), they believed (wrongly and ignorantly) that the action would be good overall for them to do. Thus ignorance, and only ignorance, is responsible for voluntary error. Weakness of will - knowingly pursuing the worse outcome - is psychologically impossible: 'No one does wrong willingly'.

The details of this argument may not represent explicit commitments of the historical Socrates. None the less, his denial of weakness of will, understood as presented in Plato's Protagoras, was the centre of a protracted debate in later times. First Plato himself, in Republic IV, then Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics VII, argued against Socrates' conclusion, on the ground that he had overlooked the fact that human beings have other sources of motivation that can produce voluntary actions, besides their ideas about what is good or bad, or right or wrong to do. 'Appetites' and 'spirited desires' exist also, which can lead a person to act in fulfilment of them without having to adopt the idea, in their beliefs about what is best to do, that so acting would be a good thing. The Stoics, however, and especially Chrysippus, argued vigorously and ingeniously in defence of Socrates' analysis and against the Platonic-Aristotelian assumption of alternative sources of motivation that produce voluntary action on their own. In fact, during Hellenistic times it was the Socratic, 'unitary' psychology of action that carried the day; the Platonic-Aristotelian alternative, dominant in the 'common sense' and the philosophy of modern times, was a minority view. The issues Socrates raised about weakness of will continue to be debated today.

7 Socrates' personality

Socrates drew to himself many of the brightest and most prominent people in Athens, securing their fascinated attention and their passionate friendship and support. His effectiveness as a philosopher, and the Socratic 'legend' itself, depended as much on the strength and interest of his personality as on the power of his mind. Plato's and Xenophon's portraits of Socrates as a person differ significantly, however. Plato's Socrates is aloof and often speaks ironically, although also with unusual and deeply held moral convictions; paradoxically, the depth and clarity of his convictions, maintained alongside the firm disclaimer to know what was true, could seem all the stronger testimony to their truth, and made them felt the more strongly as a rebuke to the superficiality of one's own way of living. In Xenophon, Socrates is also sometimes ironical and playful, especially in the Symposium, but his conversation is usually direct, even didactic, and often chummy in tone; his attitudes are for the most part conventional though earnest; and there is nothing to unsettle anyone or make them suspect hidden depths. It is much easier to believe that the Socrates of Plato's dialogues could have had such profound effects on the lives of the brightest of his contemporaries than did the character in Xenophon. That is one reason given for trusting Plato's more than Xenophon's portrait of the historical personage. But perhaps Socrates used the more kindly and genial manner and conventional approach depicted by Xenophon to draw out the best in some of his young men and his friends - ones who would have been put off by the Platonic subtleties. The historical Socrates may have been a more complex person than even Plato presents.

Plato and Xenophon both represent Socrates as strongly attracted to good-looking young men in the 'bloom' of their middle to late teens, just the period when they were also coming of age morally and intellectually. In both he speaks of himself as unusually 'erotic' by temperament and constantly 'in love'. But he explains his 'erotic' attachments in terms of his desire to converse with bright and serious young men, to question them about virtue and how best to live a human life, and to draw out what was best in their minds and characters. In Xenophon he describes his love as love for their souls, not their bodies, and he vigorously condemns sexual relations with any young man: using him that way disgraces him and harms him by encouraging a loose attitude as regards physical pleasures Symposium 8). The overheated sexuality of Plato's own accounts (Symposium and Phaedrus) of er>s, sexual love, for a young man's beauty as motivating an adult male to pursue philosophical truth into an eternal realm of Forms is to be distinguished sharply from Socrates' ideas, as we can gather them from Xenophon and from Plato's own early dialogues.

Xenophon emphasizes Socrates' freedom from the strong appetites for food, drink, sex and physical comfort that dominate other people; his enkrateia or self-mastery is the first of the virtues that Xenophon claims for him (Memorabilia I 2.1). He was notorious for going barefoot even in winter and dressing always in a simple cloak. Socrates' self-mastery was at the centre of Antisthenes' portrayal, and is reflected also in several incidents reported in Plato, such as his serene dismissal of the young Alcibiades' efforts to seduce him sexually (Plato, Symposium 217b-219e), or, perhaps when engrossed in a philosophical problem, his standing in the open (during a break in the action while on military service) from morning to night, totally indifferent to everything around him (Symposium 220c-d). This 'ascetic' Socrates, especially as presented by Antisthenes - rejecting conventional comforts and conventional behaviour - became an inspiration for the 'Cynics' of later centuries.

*****
Looking back on the early history of philosophy, later philosophers traced to Socrates a major turn in its development. As Cicero puts it: 'Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from the heavens? and compel it to ask questions about life and morality' (Tusculan Disputations V 10-11).

~~~

Socrates
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Western Philosophy
Ancient philosophy

Socrates
Name: Σωκράτης
Birth: ca. 470 BC
Death: 399 BC
School/tradition: Classical Greek, Socratic Philosophy
Main interests: epistemology, ethics
Notable ideas: Socratic method, Socratic irony
Influences: Anaxagoras, Parmenides, Prodicus, Diotima
Influenced: All of Western philosophy
Socrates (Greek: Σωκράτης, invariably anglicized as [ˈsɔkɹətiːz], Sǒcratēs; circa 470–399 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher who is widely credited for laying the foundation for Western philosophy. The most important source of information concerning Socrates is Plato. Plato's dialogues portray Socrates as a teacher who denies having disciples, as a man of reason who obeys a divine voice in his head, and a pious man who is executed for the state's own expediency. Socrates disparages the pleasures of the senses, yet is excited by beauty; he is devoted to the education of the citizens of Athens, yet indifferent to his own sons. He is often held to be the founder of Western philosophy, and its most influential practitioner.

The trial and execution of Socrates was the climax of his career and the central event of the dialogues of Plato. According to Plato, both were unnecessary. Socrates admits in court that he could have avoided the trial by abandoning philosophy and going home to mind his own business. After his conviction, he could have avoided the death penalty by escaping with the help of his friends. The reason for his cooperation with the state's mandate forms a valuable philosophical insight in its own right, and is best articulated by the dialogues themselves, especially in his dialogue with Crito.

Contents [hide]
1 Life
2 Trial and death
3 Philosophy
3.1 Socratic method
3.2 Philosophical beliefs
3.2.1 Knowledge
3.2.2 Virtue
3.2.3 Politics
3.2.4 Mysticism
4 Satirical playwrights
5 Prose sources
5.1 The Socratic dialogues
6 See also
7 Notes
8 Further reading
9 External links

[edit] Life
Details about Socrates are derived from three contemporary sources: the dialogues of Plato, the plays of Aristophanes, and the dialogues of Xenophon. Aristotle was a youth when Socrates died. There is no evidence that Socrates wrote anything himself.

Aristophanes' play, Clouds, portrays Socrates as a clown who teaches his students how to bamboozle their way out of debt. Most of Aristophanes' works, however, function as parodies. Thus one should not take his portrayal of Socrates at face value.

Socrates married Xanthippe, who was much younger than her husband. She bore him three sons, Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and Menexenus. Socrates was executed when the boys were all quite young. His friend Crito critized him for abandoning his sons when he refused to try to escape before his execution.

It is unclear how Socrates earned a living. According to Timon of Phlius and later sources, Socrates took over the profession of stonemasonry from his father. But no earlier sources corroborate this story. Plato pictures Socrates loitering around schoolyards looking for children to befriend. According to Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates is reported as saying he devotes himself only to what he regards as the most important art or occupation: discussing philosophy. Aristophanes portrays Socrates as accepting payment for teaching and running a sophist school with Chaerephon in his play 'The Clouds', while in Plato's Apology of Socrates and Symposium and in Xenophon's accounts, Socrates explicitly denies accepting payment for teaching. More specifically, in the Apology by Plato, Socrates cites his poverty as proof that he is not a teacher.

Several of Plato's dialogues refer to Socrates' military service. Socrates says he served in the Athenian army during three campaigns: at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium. In the Symposium Alcibiades describes Socrates' valour in the battles of Potidaea and Delium, recounting how Socrates saved his life in the former battle (219e-221b). Socrates' exceptional service at Delium is also mentioned in the Laches, by the general the dialogue is named after (181b). In the Apology Socrates compares his military service to his courtroom troubles, and says that anyone on the jury who thinks he ought to retreat from philosophy must also think that soldiers should retreat when it looks like they will be killed in battle.

[edit] Trial and death

The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787).See main article: Trial of Socrates

Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian Empire to its decline with the defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. At a time when Athens was seeking to stabilize and recover from its humiliating defeat, the Athenian public may have been entertaining doubts about democracy as an efficient form of government. Socrates appears to have been a critic of democracy, and his trial is interpreted by some scholars to be an expression of political infighting.

Despite claiming death-defying loyalty to his city, Socrates' pursuit of virtue and his strict adherence to truth clashed with the current course of Athenian politics and society. Here it is telling to refer to Thucydides: "Applause, in a word, went to one who got in first with some evil act, and to him who cheered on another to attempt some crime that he was not thinking of." [1] He praises Sparta, arch rival to Athens, directly and indirectly in various dialogs. But perhaps the most historically accurate of Socrates' offences to the city was his position as a social and moral critic. Rather than upholding a status quo and accepting the development of immorality within his region, Socrates worked to undermine the collective notion of "might makes right" so common to Greece during this period. Plato refers to Socrates as the gadfly of the state, insofar as he irritated the establishment with considerations of justice and the pursuit of goodness. His attempts to improve the Athenian's allegiance to justice may have been the source of his execution.

According to Plato's Apology, Socrates' life as the "gadfly" of Athens began when his friend Chaerephon asked the oracle at Delphi if anyone was wiser than Socrates; the Oracle responded that none was wiser than Socrates. Socrates believed that what the Oracle had said was a riddle, considering there is no record of the oracle ever giving individuals praise for their achievements or knowledge. He proceeded to test the riddle through approaching men who were considered to be wise by the people of Athens. He questioned the men of Athens about their knowledge of good, beauty, and virtue. Finding that they knew nothing and yet believed themselves to know much, Socrates came to the conclusion that he was wise only in so far as "that what I don't know, I don't think I know." Socrates' paradoxical wisdom made the prominent Athenians he publicly questioned look foolish, turning them against him and leading to accusations of wrongdoing.

He was nevertheless found guilty for corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to death by drinking a mix of the poisonous hemlock. Socrates turned down the pleas of Crito to attempt an escape from prison. After drinking the poison, he was instructed to walk around until his limbs felt heavy. After lying down, the man who administered the poison pinched his foot. Socrates could no longer feel his legs. The numbness slowly crept up his body until it reached his heart. Shortly before dying, Socrates spoke his last words to Crito saying, "Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Please, don't forget to pay the debt." Asclepius was the Greek god for curing illness, and its likely that Socrates' last words were implied to mean that death is the cure, and freedom, of the soul from the body. The Roman philosopher Seneca attempted to emulate Socrates' death by hemlock when forced to commit suicide by the Emperor Nero.

According to Xenophon and Plato, Socrates had an opportunity to escape, as his followers were able to bribe the prison guards. After escaping, Socrates would have had to flee from Athens. However, Socrates refused to escape for several reasons. 1. He believed that such a flight would indicate a fear of death, which he believed no true philosopher has. 2. Even if he did leave, he, and his teaching, would fare no better in another country. 3. Having knowingly agreed to live under the city's laws, he implicitly subjected himself to the possibility of being accused of crimes by its citizens and judged guilty by its jury. To do otherwise would have caused him to break his 'contract' with the state, and by so doing harming it, an act contrary to Socratic principle. The full reasoning behind his refusal to flee is the main subject of The Crito.

According to Xenophon's story of Socrates' defense to the jury, Socrates' purposefully gives a defiant defense to the jury because "he believed he would be better off dead." Xenophon's explanation goes on to describe a defense by Socrates that explains the rigors of old age, and how Socrates will be glad to circumvent these by being sentenced to death. It is also understood that Socrates not only wished to avoid the pains of old age, but also to die because he "actually believed the right time had come for him to die."

[edit] Philosophy

Portrait of Socrates, Roman marble, Louvre museum
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[edit] Socratic method
See main article: Socratic method

Perhaps his most important contribution to Western thought is his dialectic (answering a question with a question) method of inquiry, known as the Socratic Method or method of elenchos, which he largely applied to the examination of key moral concepts such as the Good and Justice. It was first described by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues.To solve a problem you would ask a question and when finding the answer you would also have an answer to your problem. This led to the beginning of the Scientific Method, in which the first step says to name the problem in the form of a question. For this, Socrates is customarily regarded as the father of political philosophy and ethics or moral philosophy, and as a fountainhead of all the main themes in Western philosophy in general. (The method may have been suggested by Zeno of Elea , but Socrates refined it and applied it to ethical problems.)

In this method, a series of questions are posed to help a person or group to determine their underlying beliefs and the extent of their knowledge. The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine his own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, "I know you won't believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others."[2]

[edit] Philosophical beliefs
The beliefs of Socrates, as opposed to those of Plato, are difficult to discern. Little in the way of concrete evidence demarcates the two. The lengthy theories given in most of the dialogues are those of Plato, and it is thought that Plato so adapted the Socratic style as to make the literary character and the philosopher himself impossible to demarcate. Others argue that he did have his own theories and beliefs, but there is much controversy over what these might have been, owing to the difficulty of separating Socrates from Plato and the difficulty of interpreting even the dramatic writings concerning Socrates. Consequently, distinguishing the philosophical beliefs of Socrates from those of Plato and Xenophon is not easy and it must be remembered that what is attributed to Socrates might more closely reflect the specific concerns of these thinkers.

If anything in general can be said about the philosophical beliefs of Socrates, it is that he was morally, intellectually, and politically at odds with his fellow Athenians. When he is on trial for heresy and corrupting the young, he uses his method of elenchos to demonstrate to the jurors that their moral values are wrong-headed. He tells them that they are concerned with their families, careers, and political responsibilities when they ought to be worried about the "welfare of their souls." Socrates' belief in the immortality of the soul, and his conviction that the gods had singled him out as a divine emissary seemed to provoke if not annoyance, at least ridicule. Socrates also questioned the Sophistic doctrine that arete (that is, virtue) can be taught. He liked to observe that successful fathers (such as the prominent military general Pericles) did not produce sons of their own quality. Socrates argued that moral excellence was more a matter of divine bequest than parental nurture. This belief may have contributed to his lack of anxiety about the future of his own sons.

Socrates frequently says that his ideas are not his own, and that he has gotten them from his teachers. He mentions several influences: Prodicus the rhetor and Anaxagoras the scientist. Perhaps surprisingly, Socrates claims to have been deeply influenced by two women besides his mother. He says that Diotima, a witch and priestess from Mantinea taught him all he knows about eros, or love, and that Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, taught him the art of funeral orations. John Burnet argued that his principal teacher was the Anaxagorean Archelaus but that his ideas were as Plato described them; Eric A. Havelock, on the other hand, considered Socrates' association with the Anaxagoreans to be evidence of Plato's philosophical separation from Socrates.

[edit] Knowledge
Socrates seems to have often said that his wisdom was limited to an awareness of his own ignorance. Socrates may have believed that wrongdoing was a consequence of ignorance, that those who did wrong knew no better. The one thing Socrates consistently claimed to have knowledge of was "the art of love" which he connected with the concept of "the love of wisdom", i.e., philosophy. He never actually claimed to be wise, only to understand the path that a lover of wisdom must take in pursuing it. It is debatable whether Socrates believed that humans (as opposed to gods like Apollo) could actually become wise. On the one hand, he drew a clear line between human ignorance and ideal knowledge; on the other, Plato's Symposium (Diotima's Speech) and Republic (Allegory of the Cave) describe a method for ascending to wisdom.

[edit] Virtue
Socrates believed that the best way for people to live was to focus on self-development rather than the pursuit of material wealth. (Gross 2). He always invited others to try to concentrate more on friendships and a sense of true community, for Socrates felt that this was the best way for people to grow together as a populace. His actions lived up to this: in the end, Socrates accepted his death sentence when most thought he would simply leave Athens, as he felt he could not run away from or go against the will of his community; as above, his reputation for valor on the battlefield was without reproach.

The idea that humans possessed certain virtues formed a common thread in Socrates' teachings. These virtues represented the most important qualities for a person to have, foremost of which were the philosophical or intellectual virtues. Socrates stressed that "virtue was the most valuable of all possessions; the ideal life was spent in search of the Good. Truth lies beneath the shadows of existence, and that it is the job of the philosopher to show the rest how little they really know." (Solomon 44)

Ultimately, virtue relates to the form of the Good; to truly be good and not just act with "right opinion"; one must come to know the unchanging Good in itself. In the Republic, he describes the "divided line" a continuum of ignorance to knowledge with the Good on top of it all; only at the top of this line do we find true good and the knowledge of such.

[edit] Politics
It is often argued that Socrates believed "ideals belong in a world that only the wise man can understand" making the philosopher the only type of person suitable to govern others. According to Plato's account, Socrates was in no way subtle about his particular beliefs on government. He openly objected to the democracy that ran Athens during his adult life. It was not only Athenian democracy: Socrates objected to any form of government that did not conform to his ideal of a perfect republic led by philosophers (Solomon 49), and Athenian government was far from that. During the last years of Socrates' life, Athens was in continual flux due to political upheaval. Democracy was at last overthrown by a junta known as the Thirty Tyrants, led by Plato's relative, Critias, who had been a student of Socrates. The Tyrants ruled for about a year before the Athenian democracy was reinstated, at which point it declared an amnesty for all recent events. Four years later, it acted to silence the voice of Socrates.

This argument is often denied, and the question is one of the biggest philosophical debates when trying to determine what, exactly, it was that Socrates believed. The strongest argument of those who claim that Socrates did not actually believe in the idea of philosopher kings is Socrates' constant refusal to enter into politics or participate in government of any sort; he often stated that he could not look into other's matters or tell people how to live their lives when he did not yet understand how to live his own. He believed he was a philosopher engaged in the pursuit of Truth, and did not claim to know it fully. Socrates' acceptance of his death sentence, after his conviction by the Boule (ancient Greece)|Boule' (Senate), can also be seen to support this view. It is often claimed that much of the anti-democratic leanings are from Plato, who was never able to overcome his disgust at what was done to his teacher. In any case, it is clear that Socrates thought that the rule of the Thirty Tyrants was at least as objectionable as democracy; when called before them to assist in the arrest of a fellow Athenian, Socrates refused and narrowly escaped death before the Tyrants were overthrown. He did however fulfill his duty to serve as prytanie when a trial of a group of generals who presided over a disastrous naval campaign were judged; even then he maintained an uncompromising attitude, being one of those who refused to proceed in a manner not supported by the laws, despite intense pressure.[3] Judging by his actions, he considered the rule of the Thirty Tyrants less legitimate than that of the democratic senate who sentenced him to death.

[edit] Mysticism
As depicted in the dialogues of Plato, Socrates often seems to manifest a mystical side, discussing reincarnation and the mystery religions; however, this is generally attributed to Plato. Regardless, this cannot be dismissed out of hand, as we cannot be sure of the differences between the views of Plato and Socrates; in addition, there seem to be some corollaries in the works of Xenophon. In the culmination of the philosophic path as discussed in Plato's Symposium and Republic, one comes to the Sea of Beauty or to the sight of the form of the Good in an experience akin to mystical revelation; only then can one become wise. (In the Symposium, Socrates credits his speech on the philosophic path to his teacher, the priestess Diotima, who is not even sure if Socrates is capable of reaching the highest mysteries). In the Meno, he refers to the Eleusinian Mysteries, telling Meno he would understand Socrates' answers better if only he could stay for the initiations next week.

Perhaps the most interesting facet of this is Socrates' reliance on what the Greeks called his "daemonic sign", an averting (ἀποτρεπτικός) inner voice that Socrates heard only when he was about to make a mistake. It was this sign that prevented Socrates from entering into politics. In the Phaedrus, we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of "divine madness", the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself. Alternately, the sign is often taken to be what we would call "intuition"; however, Socrates' characterization of the phenomenon as "daemonic" suggests that its origin is divine, mysterious, and independent of his own thoughts.

An Ahmadiyyah Scholar, Mirza Tahir Ahmad , (The Fourth Caliph of The Ahmadiyyat Movement in Islam) argues that Socrates experienced what can be called a prophetic revelation. He writes in his book, Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth, that "Socrates seems to have a very personalized and intense relationship with the Supreme Being. His very personality is built on the pattern of the messengers of God."[4]

[edit] Satirical playwrights
He was prominently lampooned in Aristophanes' comedy The Clouds, produced when Socrates was in his mid-forties; he said at his trial (in Plato's version) that the laughter of the theater was a harder task to answer than the arguments of his accusers. In the play he is ridiculed for his dirtiness, which is associated with the Laconizing fad; also in plays by Callias, Eupolis, and Telecleides. In all of these, Socrates and the Sophists were criticised for "the moral dangers inherent in contemporary thought and literature".

[edit] Prose sources
Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle are the main sources for the historical Socrates; however, Xenophon and Plato were direct disciples of Socrates, and presumably, they idealize him; however, they wrote the only continuous descriptions of Socrates that have come down to us. Aristotle refers frequently, but in passing, to Socrates in his writings. Almost all of Plato's works center around Socrates. However Plato's latter works appear to be more his own philosophy put into the mouth of his mentor.

[edit] The Socratic dialogues
See main article: Socratic dialogues

The Socratic dialogues are a series of dialogues written by Plato and Xenophon in the form of discussions between Socrates and other persons of his time, or as discussions between Socrates' followers over his concepts. Plato's Phaedo is an example of this latter category. Although his Apology is a monologue delivered by Socrates, it is usually grouped with the dialogues.

The Apology professes to be a record of the actual speech that Socrates delivered in his own defense at the trial. In the Athenian jury system, an Apology is composed of three parts: a speech, followed by a counter-assessment, then some final words. "Apology" is a transliteration, not a translation, of the Greek apologia, meaning "defense"; in this sense it is not apologetic according to our contemporary use of the term.

Plato generally does not place his own ideas in the mouth of a specific speaker; he lets ideas emerge via the Socratic method, under the guidance of Socrates. Most of the dialogues present Socrates applying this method to some extent, but nowhere as completely as in the Euthyphro. In this dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro go through several iterations of refining the answer to Socrates' question, "...What is the pious, and what the impious?"

In Plato's dialogues, learning appears as a process of remembering. The soul, before its incarnation in the body, was in the realm of Ideas (very similar to the Platonic "Forms"). There, it saw things the way they truly are, rather than the pale shadows or copies we experience on earth. By a process of questioning, the soul can be brought to remember the ideas in their pure form, thus bringing wisdom.

Especially for Plato's writings referring to Socrates, it is not always clear which ideas brought forward by Socrates (or his friends) actually belonged to Socrates and which of these may have been new additions or elaborations by Plato — this is known as the Socratic problem. Generally, the early works of Plato are considered to be close to the spirit of Socrates, whereas the later works — including Phaedo and the "Republic" — are considered to be possibly products of Plato's elaborations.

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